Bamako — Regional ministers coordinating West Africa's negotiation of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU) for a free trade area between the two regions are meeting in Bamako to chart a way forward in the protracted negotiations.

The negotiations, launched in August 2004, have been slowed down mostly over the contentious issues of the EPA Development Programme and schedule for the liberalization of the West African market.

West Africa is insisting on an EU-funded EPADP that will enable the region cope with adjustment costs of implementing the EPA, including improving its competitiveness and a phased liberalization schedule over 25 years that will allow it to liberalize 70 per cent of its market and protect the remaining 30 per cent after a moratorium of five years.

The region wants the EU to contribute nine billion Euros to the fund for the first five years while the EU refused to pledge fresh funds and instead cited the six billion Euros available to the region under the 9th European Development Fund (EDF) and other bilateral contributions from ECOWAS Member States.

Regional leaders have variously insisted, including during their last Summit in February 2010, on a "binding and concrete commitment of the EU to the EPADP backed by a financing plan".

The two-day meeting of the Ministerial Monitoring Committee (MMC), comprising ministers responsible for trade in ECOWAS Member States and Mauritania, will review the recommendations of the preceding meeting of regional experts which reviewed the status of implementation of the last MMC meeting held in Abuja in May 2009 and the EPADP.

Also for the consideration of the ministers are the recommendations of the experts who attended the meeting regarding the draft text of the agreement, the regional market access offer, the report on the net fiscal impact of the proposed EPA, the negotiation of the rules of origin and the implementation status of a region-wide Common External Tariff (CET).

The ministers will also decide on the contentious issues of the exclusion of the ECOWAS and UEMOA Community levies (CL and CSL) which sustains both institutions but which the EU wants scrapped as a non-tariff barrier; the tariff dismantling process; the exclusion of the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clause in the text of the agreement to provide an opportunity for West Africa to promote south-south trade.

Also to be decided is the exclusion of the non-execution clause from the text of the agreement to ensure that the clause, which relates to the issues of good governance and democracy, are restricted only to the Political Dialogue provisions in the Cotonou Partnership Agreement between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. West Africa wants the clause excluded from the EPA as it is not trade-related but a governance issue.