ute and engage in a further review of the real value of the EPA to the region.
“We are to appeal to the President of France to meet with us and consider some areas of concern and see whether we can get the European Community to understand and support our position,” King added.
In Jamaica, where the Bruce Golding administration has said it would sign, the main opposition People’s National Party (PNP) says it plans to raise serious concerns about the EPA when Parliament resumes next month.
Former prime minister and PNP president Portia Simpson-Miller has called a special caucus of the party’s executive committee and parliamentary group for Monday to review and finalise the PNP’s position on the EPA.
“The Policy Commission of the People’s National Party, chaired by Ambassador Anthony Hylton, opposition spokesman on foreign affairs and foreign trade, has been actively reviewing the provisions of the EPA in its current form and has held several discussions with various groups in the People’s National Party over the last several months,” the party said in a statement.
The Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC) said it welcomed the new position by some governments.
“CPDC will like to reiterate its call for Caribbean governments to push for the renegotiation of the agreement even at this time, to correct the flaws and the contentious areas within the agreement,” it said.
The Barbados-based NGO is also urging the Caribbean “to push for renegotiation to ensure that the agreement will have long-term benefits, create tangible sectoral linkages and, most importantly, remove the less than progressive elements of the agreement”.
by Peter Richards
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) – At the end of December last year, none of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries, with the exception of Guyana, had envisaged problems in signing the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) that had been negotiated with the European Union.
The regional leaders strongly defended the accord negotiated by the Barbados-based Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) on behalf of Cariforum which comprises the 15-member Caricom grouping and the Dominican Republic.
In fact, the leaders were quick to adopt the phrase made popular by the late Dominica prime minister Dame Eugenia Charles, that “bad elections are better than no election at all”, with regard to the political situation in Haiti, by indicating that although there were concerns about the EPA, it was better than nothing.
Now, eight months after congratulating themselves for having become the first region within the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) grouping to conclude negotiations with Europe on the EPA, some Caribbean governments appear to be having cold feet as the time draws near to affix their signatures to the document.
Barbados Prime Minister David Thompson has called for an urgent meeting of Caricom leaders as uncertainty surrounds how many regional states will now sign the agreement scheduled for Barbados on 2 Sept.
Thompson has sent a letter to the Caricom Chairman Baldwin Spencer, expressing concern about “untenable inconsistencies” among member states regarding the EPA.
His letter underscores the division that has emerged since the regional leaders met in Antigua for their annual summit last month.
The brief reference to the EPA in the communiqué noted that “several of them (had) expressed readiness to sign”.
Last week Barbados gave an emphatic “yes” to signing the agreement in September.
“Our position is that we are proceeding. There have been no instructions from the heads of government or from the Prime Ministerial sub-committee on external negotiations, which is chaired by Jamaica, that such a signing on that date ought not to take place,” Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and International Business Minister Christopher Sinckler said.
“We believe that after three to four years of intense negotiation the option of opening up that agreement to renegotiation at this stage is just not a feasible option. We doubt very much in our minds that it would be agreed to by the European Commission.”
Stills earlier this month, a Barbados government legislator, James Paul accused regional stakeholders who brokered the EPA of failing their people by agreeing to a “bad deal”.
“We were prepared to sit down and listen to the garbage coming out of Europe about free trade without really examining what they were doing,” he told participants of a Cariforum-EU review meeting.
Carl Greenidge, the CRNM deputy senior director told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) that regional states that do not sign would not be able to derail the implementation of the new trade deal.
“If one (Caricom) country chooses not to sign at all and they persuade the European Union that they don’t have the intention of signing, the regulation that the European Union passed on 20 Dec., requires that that country be taken off the list,” he said, explaining that the country would also be excluded from any of the institutional arrangements.
Guyana has long indicated that it was not prepared to sign the accord in its present format. Like some Caribbean trade unions, academics, opposition parties and non-governmental organisations, Georgetown has been calling for a renegotiation of the accord and said it would only sign on after it holds public consultations.
The Bharrat Jagdeo government says these consultations will begin after the country hosts the 10-day Caribbean Festival of Arts (Carifesta) – the region’s premier cultural festival – which began on 22 Aug.
Jagdeo has continued his attack on the EPA, noting that ACP countries had not been in favour of replacing the traditional ACP unit with EPAs and regional groupings.
“We have always resisted this. We thought that this would be problematic because they’re breaking the traditional ACP solidarity that we had and you know with solidarity comes strength, especially with negotiations and secondly to argue for WTO compatibility, for small countries, developing countries in the world.
“This was contrary to the spirit of successive international agreements which argued that there should be special and differential treatment of these countries in international trade and economic international relations,” he said.
He said though that despite this, the countries signed on due to Europe’s significant negotiating power which was no match for the Caribbean with its “tiny” economies.
“If you combine the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of all the countries in our region, it would be less than the assets of a large bank in Europe so you can imagine how unbalanced, how uneven the negotiations are because you’re not negotiating as two equal partners. They got their way because they’re essentially a bigger power and they can always threaten to cut off their markets,” he said.
The Prime Minister of St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, one of the main supporters of the EPA, urged his colleagues to sign because “it is preferable to sign than not to.
“I, for instance, am a righthander. I will probably put my right hand on my heart and sign with my left hand. What I am indicating by that, metaphorically, is that one would wish that you had a better “deal”, but you can manage in the circumstances,” he said.
Spencer, who is also the Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister, has said that it is still possible for the Caribbean to sign the agreement next month, even while holding on to the possibility of renegotiating some of the measures afterwards.
“What we would really hope is that everybody will be on board. It (united position) doesn’t always work. There are issues that have been raised not only by Guyana and Grenada, but by individuals in the Caribbean who are passionate about the Caribbean and its future.
“They have raised some issues and they feel the Caribbean countries ought not to sign because we haven’t had enough out of the deal. That is a question of judgment, it is a question of opinion (and) the question is to have to weight the advantages against the disadvantages.
“Do we put ourselves in a better position if we just say ‘look we are not signing’? There are certain implications for that,” Spencer told reporters, adding “as a matter of fact we are seeking to make some representation at the level of President of the European Union.
“We are not just sitting back and saying well listen, come 2 Sept., we just have to sign come what may. What we are saying (is that) we are making certain manoeuvres in the meantime to see what can be done to create an environment in which we know that even if we sign in September we have an opportunity to revisit, readjust certain situations that are of concern to us,” Spencer said.
St. Lucia’s Prime Minister Stephenson King, like the new Grenada Prime Minister, Tillman Thomas, is not ready to sign.
“Based on the advice we have been receiving from several quarters we, as members of the Caribbean Community, are now in a better position to say let us slow down a min