Johannesburg — EUROPEAN Union (EU) trade commissioner Catherine Ashton is confident that an interim economic partnership agreement (EPA) between the EU and countries negotiating a deal under the Southern African Development Community (SADC) configuration will be signed within weeks.

Plans to sign off on the deal in Brussels last week were shelved, mainly because the parties agreed to wait for the appointment of a new South African trade minister.

Ashton, who was in SA at the weekend for the presidential inauguration of Jacob Zuma, said she had agreed to a request to postpone the signing of the deal to give the new minister an opportunity to become acquainted with the content of the interim EPA, which has been under negotiation for two years.

But Ashton was also emphatic that the signing of the deal would go ahead even if SA opted not to sign. SA has its own trade arrangement with the EU under the trade, development and co-operation agreement . But some other countries in the SADC configuration -- specifically Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland (BLNS) which together with SA form the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu), as well as Mozambique -- do not benefit from the legal security in their trading relations with the EU. The EU has been unilaterally extending preferences to the region in breach of World Trade Organisation rules since expiry of a waiver on the Cotonou agreement at the end of 2007.

"Their (SA's) participation would be an important symbolic signal, but it is not essential for them to sign," Ashton said on Saturday. But she said it mattered "enormously" to her that the government understood the issues and was comfortable with the deal.

Most of the concerns SADC countries had with the EPA have been resolved, and the EU had, significantly, abandoned a request for the liberalisation of 320 tariff lines which would have given the EU easier access into the BLNS market, in order to maintain Sacu's common external tariff.

However, agreement remains elusive on two key issues, namely the EU's demand for a most-favoured nation clause and the issue of the definition of the parties, which SA said would compromise the regional integration plans of SADC.

Under the most-favoured nation clause, concessions made to countries whose trade exceeded more than 1% of world trade would, in future trade agreements, be automatically extended to the EU. Ashton said it was important for parties to realise that this clause would not affect trade between African countries. But she said the EU was the biggest supporter of aid for trade, and it should therefore be able to take part when development enabled African countries in future to liberalise their markets.

"Realistically, our member countries believe that African countries will develop their economies and, come the day that they are ready to liberalise further, the EU should want to see that it has a part in that."