allAfrica.com: Namibia: EC's Non-Coherent EPA Policy On Africa (Page 1 of 4)

Since the establishment of the European Union (EU) through the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, the bloc has adopted a series of measures in relation to development in Africa. Although contained in all these measures, the ethos of coherence between different EU policies was innately lacking in its practical dealings with the continent.

This truistic non-coherence was elevated to the point where the EU eventually adopted the "EU Consensus on Development" (2006/C 46/01) in February 2006, sagaciously committing itself to a policy of coherence.

However, the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) agenda of the European Commission (EC) clearly illustrates the masquerade of its disdainful approach towards Africa in an accelerated disregard for the EU's coherence policy.

(Note that the EC is the executive arm of the EU, with the mandate to negotiate EPAs on behalf of all the member states.)

These sentiments are perspicaciously evident in the Joint EU-Africa Strategy that was adopted during the EU-Africa Summit in Lisbon in December 2007.

The Joint EU-Africa Strategy includes an action plan (First Action Plan: 2008 - 2010) consisting of eight partnerships and an institutional architecture for closer cooperation.

The third of these partnerships is the EU-Africa Partnership on Trade and Regional Integration (which is closely linked to the fourth partnership, namely the EU-Africa Partnership on the Millennium Development Goals - MDGs).

The three priority actions of this partnership are (i) support the African integration agenda, (ii) strengthen African capacities in the area of rules, standard and quality control, and (iii) implement the EU-Africa Infrastructure Partnership (the latter was signed on 24 October 2007).

The objective of the first priority action is the political and socio-economic integration of Africa in line with the Abuja Treaty. This, the 1991 Treaty became operational in 1994 and gave birth to the African Union (AU), launched during the Durban Summit in 2002. The Constitutive Act of the AU (adopted during the Lomé Summit in 2000) inter alia provided for the preparation of a "Protocol on Relations between the AU and Regional Economic Communities" (RECs).

One of the four expected outcomes of this priority action is to create synergies between the African integration process and the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs).

Two of the seven activities to be undertaken in order to achieve the objective are (i) to ensure that EPAs support Africa's regional integration initiatives, and (ii) to enhance the capacity of the AU Commission, the different RECs, as well as the individual African countries to coordinate and implement this integration agenda.

Throughout this third partnership, reference is made to the AU, the AU Commission and RECs.

During the 7th AU Summit in Banjul on 01 and 02 July 2006, a decision was adopted to recognize only eight RECs in Africa and to suspend the recognition of any new RECs in an effort to rationalize the process of regional integration. The Declaration specifically "Requests Member States, RECs and the United Nations System, as well as development partners to collaborate closely with the Commission in conducting the rationalization process".

The discrepancy between EPA configurations and AU recognized RECs was already alluded to during the Cairo (June 2005) and Nairobi (April 2006) Conferences of AU Ministers of Trade, with the Nairobi Declaration on EPAs specifically expressing these concerns in, "We urge our development partners to fully respect our [process of economic integration in Africa] and to refrain from pursuing negotiating objectives that would adversely affect these existing programmes and process of economic integration in Africa", and "In particular, we urge the regional economic communities as building blocs for the African Economic Community to ensure that economic partnership agreements with the European Community do not constitute any obstacles to the coordination and harmonisation of their programmes and activities, including for the progressive formation among themselves of free trade areas and customs unions on a priority basis and ahead of any similar agreements with the EC."

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is one of the eight RECs recognized by the AU. The EC's EPA agenda resulted in the SADC bloc's splitting into four, with Member States now negotiating EPAs as part of the Central African-, the Eastern African Community (EAC)-, the Eastern and Southern African (ESA)- and SADC configurations. This is a clear indication of the EC's adroit capitalization on the volatility of the African regional integration initiatives and the exploitation of the gullibility of countries under the AU efforts towards African unity - and in the process to exonerate itself from the blame of any split-ups of existing RECs.

Taking into account the objective, expected outcomes and activities of the first priority action of the EU-Africa Partnership on Trade and Regional Integration, it is clear that the EU has a total disregard for the AU and its mandate for regional integration in their EPA negotiations with African countries.

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