Analysis by RICKEY SINGH

THERE ARE two pertinent questions being raised for Wednesday's special summit in Barbados of Caribbean Community Heads of Government on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU).

Will it be focused primarily on signing off on the text that was initialled last December, or be extended to achieve a consensus that also addresses concerns on the manner of its implementation, specifically on contentious provisions involving trade and development issues?

Secondly, since the Caribbean is an integral founding partner of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) bloc of nations linked to the EU, may it not be advisable to defer a final commitment on a signing date to await the outcome of the forthcoming Sixth ACP Summit in Accra, Ghana, that has the regional EPAs with the EU on its agenda?

The ACP summit, scheduled for September 30 to October 3, will address concerns that include clauses identified by the recent Conference Of African Ministers Of Trade And Finance deemed harmful to countries that have initialled interim EPAs. Some of these concerns have been raised by Caribbean critics of the full EPA initialled by CARIFORUM last December.

Critics of the EPAs and approaches by the European Commission for compliance on signing off in a "reasonable period", have been referencing a legal opinion shared with European Members of Parliament and ACP governments, done by Dr Loran Bartels on: "The legal status of initialled EPAs and legal constraints on renegotiation".

A lecturer in international law at the University of Cambridge, Bartels contends that "ACP countries are not obliged, under treaty law or World Trade Organisation (WTO) law to sign any interim or full EPA that they have initialled. An initial text is sufficient for WTO notification purposes . . . . Nor are ACP countries precluded by treaty law or WTO law from renegotiating initialled ageements, so long as the resulting agreement is still WTO-legal . . .".

Further, he argues, "they [ACP states] should also be able to do this without prejudicing tariff preferences granted under the EPA Regulation, given that this regulation is designed to ensure the WTO-legality of the preferences, and not to strengthen the EU's bargaining position . . .".

Plans for strategising, therefore, with the ACP Secretariat ahead of the coming Accra Summit was under consideration in the context of planned deliberations for Guyana's one-day national consultation of stakeholders on the CARIFORUM/EU EPA that took place in Georgetown last Friday.

A report on the outcome of the consultation will be given to Wednesday's special summt on the EPA by Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo. He had advised his Community colleagues at last July's regular annual summit that his government would defer commitment to sign before the outcome of the national consultation that has now taken place.

Quartet of absentees

At least four Caribbean Heads of Government will be absent for this special one-day summit intended to resolve differences over how to proceed towards signing off on the EPA. They are the prime ministers of Trinidad and Tobago (Patrick Manning), The Bahamas (Hubert Ingraham) and Belize (Dean Barrow), and president of the Dominican Republic (Leonel Fernandez). They will, however, be represented, at various levels.

Confirmation of participation was still being awaited, at the time of writing, from Jamaica's Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who currently chairs CARICOM's Prime Ministerial Subcommittee on External Trade and Economic Negotiations.

Plans have been finalised by Barbados' Foreign Ministry, in cooperation with the Community Secretariat in Georgetown for Wednesday's summit, at which the Dominican Republic's representative will have the status of a CARIFORUM group partner and not a CARICOM member.

The optimistic projection is that of an expected consensus for signatures by all countries of the CARIFORUM group, once the hurdle of an appropriate date for the signing ceremony is overcome and the EU member states concur.

This optimism is, however, associated with an emerging initiative currently being pursued, for CARICOM's collaboration with the ACP at the Accra Summit to "strengthen solidarity" against perceived EU pressures to sign the EPA text no later than October 31 or face the consequences of withdrawal of market access in Europe.

Top officials of the European Commission and the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) who were involved in the negotiations concluded for the full EPA, were among presenters at Friday's town hall-style national consultation in Guyana.

Jagdeo, who addressed the opening session, is on record as denouncing what he had earlier termed "the bullying tactics" of Europe calling for signing the economic accord within a certain time frame.