NEW ties between the European Union (EU) and the African Caribbean and Pacific Countries (ACP) have a risk of undermining regional integration by fragmenting countries into numerous blocs, trade experts have warned.

ACP countries used to enjoy unilateral trade preferences with the EU but the waiver expired in December 2007 in line with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules of non-discrimination.

The parties could not complete a comprehensive trade agreement, Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) in line with WTO rule. They settled for interim agreements while working on completing the full trade deal.

To date 20 ACP countries have initialled the agreement of partial scope requiring continued negotiations to reach a full agreement in mid 2009.

Initialling reflects a country's intention to sign the trade deal.

The other countries have said they will not append their signatures to the agreement. Trade experts say EPAs have split ACP countries into configurations which have undermined regional integration.

Thomas Deve, Policy Analyst for Africa at the UN Millennium campaign said EPAs "will kill off any ambitions we have for regional integration within and across Africa and South-South relations with other developing regions".

"Already, the EPAs have split all of Africa's regions - in West Africa for example, Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire have broken ranks and endangered unity by going ahead to agree 'interim EPAs' with Europe," he said.

Richard Kamidza, Programme Associate at the South Africa-based think-tank, Institute for a Democratic Alternative for Zimbabwe (Idazim) says EPAs have split the 79 ACP countries into clusters despite being weak, vulnerable and poor.

He said while the Caribbean and Pacific regions are physically defined, the same cannot be said of Africa where countries hop from one regional grouping into another.

Of the 16 Economic Community for West African states, eight belong to the West African Economic and Monetary Union while the remainder are members of the Central African Economic and Monetary Union.

Fifteen countries in the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) have overlapping membership in the Intergovernmental Authority on Development; the Indian Ocean Commission; the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa).

Kamidza said EPAs negotiations are characterised by two unequal partners both politically and economically which will expose the already weakened ACP countries.

"EPAs are premised within the neo-liberal policy framework of 'one-size-fits-all' trade liberalisation and market integration, which entails opening up ACP markets to EU producers and consumers; entrenching Structural Adjustment Programme and redressing EU's crisis of overproduction and profitability," he said.

EPAs, he said, will expose ACP's weak industrial capacity to EU products and services. The majority of ACP countries export mainly raw competitive products to EU markets.

Kamidza said EPAs trap ACP countries into aid dependency.

"Increasing aid dependence which in the case of Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania is estimated to rise to between 27-50% of the gross national income by 2010 from between 14-24% in 2004," he said.

Rangarirai Machemedze, deputy executive director at the Southern and Eastern African Trade, Information and Negotiations Institute said while the EU was negotiating as a bloc, ACP countries were negotiating on an individual basis which creates divisions among member countries.

". . . the fact that they (interim EPAs) were concluded by individual countries has resulted in divisions among ACP regions to the extent of jeopardising regional economic integration," he said.

Machemedze said the concessions made within these agreements are greater -- both in extent and scope -- to those that would have been required to ensure their basic conformity with WTO norms.

Machemedze said interim agreements tie ACP negotiators to a detailed and intensive negotiating agenda on trade-related disciplines and trade in services.

Kamidza said the introduction of new issues including services, intellectual property, environment, investment and competition were part of the EU's psychological warfare.

He accused the EU of dangling the development aid envelope through the 10th European Development Fund to force some countries to leave one EPA configuration for another.

As a result, Tanzania had dumped the Sadc grouping in favour of EAC in the negotiations. The Democratic Republic of Congo, which initially was in the ESA grouping has joined CEMAC.

But the EU contends that EPAs are pro-development and support regional integration. Zimbabwe initialled an interim agreement with the EU. According to the agreement, Zimbabwe will liberalise 80% of its imports from the EU by 2022.

The liberalisation will come in two phases: 45% by 2012 and 35% liberalised progressively until 2022.

But there are products excluded by Zimbabwe from liberalisation, mainly to protect sensitive products or infant industries - of animal origin, cereals, beverages, paper, plastic and rubber, textile and clothing, footwear, glass and ceramics, consumer electronics and vehicles.

The successful conclusion of EPAs was meant to fully legalise EU-ACP trade relations with WTO rules and in the process remove the likelihood of a legal dispute within the WTO by non-ACP countries.

Since the trade preferences were ending on December 31, 2007, EPAs were meant to guarantee a continuation of trade flows from the ACP to the EU, avoiding disruptions due to the absence of a favourable trade regime as from January 1, 2008.

It was also meant to guarantee a continuation of the EU-ACP conditions of trade, that is, the maintenance of the market access conditions established by the Lomé Conventions and lock EPAs parties into a road map for the continuation of negotiations on areas of mutual interest.