The set deadline to sign the Caribbean Forum-European Commission (CARIFORUM-EC) Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) is today.
However, there are still many lingering, unanswered questions regarding the repercussions of signing the agreement by Caribbean countries.
Sir Ron Sanders, former Caribbean diplomat and business executive, stated, “While the EPA says services will be reciprocal, we know that the reality is that they (the European Commission (EC)) will apply, on a country to country basis, restrictions that will prevent that from happening.”
Ideally, the EPA is supposed to promote sustainable development, poverty reduction and regional integration, in an effort to extricate African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states from the third world and integrate them into the global economy.
However, due to a number of factors, Sir Ron, among others, believes that these ideological claims are nowhere apparent in the EPA as it is currently presented.
Sir Ron stated that part of what has happened in the EPA, is that the question of services has been introduced into the agreement, including tourism, banking among others.
The EPA claims that members of the European Union (EU) have opened their market to the services offered in Caribbean states, who have been given clearance to do the same for European services.
According to Sir Ron, it is not that simple. “If a bank in Antigua wanted to go set up a bank in Europe, the agreement will not allow it to. While the agreement will be between Antigua and the entire European community, the European commissioners who signed, have put in the fine print that each individual country in the EU, as in all 27 members, will have the right to decide whether it will allow that service to enter its country.”
In other words, each member of the EU will have the right to establish its own rules, regulations, and even visas, for a foreign company’s right to establish a service.
Although Antigua and Barbuda possess the right to impose visa restrictions and other measures on European investment, Sir Ron notes that the chances of that happening are highly unlikely.
“Antigua and Barbuda wants the foreign investment and we kowtow to get foreign investment into the country, whereas, the Europeans would try to stop our investments from going to their territory.”
The reciprocity that has become a key player in discussions about the EPA appears to pool to the side of the EU in Sir Ron’s view.
Even if the restrictions did not exist, Sir Ron insists that the possibility of an Antiguan and Barbudan bank or hotel, competing with larger institutions already in place in Europe, is bleak.
“Our institutions will simply not have the resources to compete in the European market, but the European institutions will have vast resources to outnumber the companies with which they will compete in Antigua.”
The bottom line according to Sir Ron is that the dimension of development, which the EPA had promised, is missing and under the current arrangement, many islands including Antigua and Barbuda will be caught in a quagmire if they sign.
“If there was a development component, that was of a sufficient amount of money, on a predictable basis over time, where Antigua and Barbuda could allocate money to compensate from the dislocation of tariff revenues, I would say fine. As it is now, the promise is not firm…there is no predictability to the current development promises.”