Southern Africa: EPA Negotiations Drag On

25 March 2014

Windhoek — The last round of EPA negotiations between the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the European Commission (EC) took place in Johannesburg, South Africa in the first week of this month.

Despite some remaining unresolved issues, progress was achieved thanks to converging views on some of the pertinent issues, with some issues eventually being resolved. The two major unresolved issues remaining are export taxes and the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clause. However, a convergence of views was achieved on agricultural and bilateral safeguards, the entry into force of the agreement, market access, rules of origin or RoO and the standstill clause, according to the Namibian Agricultural Union (NAU). "Despite not being resolved during this last round of EPA negotiations, the resolution of many of these issues is interdependent on each other. This means that should one issue be resolved, another would also be resolved. For example, should the issue of agricultural safeguards be resolved, then the bilateral safeguards would also be resolved; and if market access is resolved, so would be the entry into force of the agreement," the NAU announced last week Friday. Where the EC initially saw no need to include agricultural safeguards in the agreement, during the last round of negotiations it was agreed in principle that such safeguards could be applied to a list of pre-specified products.

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