EU coy over SADC EPA deadline
Brian Benza | Friday June 6, 2014 16:04
Speaking during the launch of the Afena press club in Gaborone on Tuesday, Trade and industry minister Dorcas Makgato-Malesu said that they are hopeful the EU bloc will allow trade to continue until all SADC member states have initialed the deal.
In April, SADC ministers led by Makgato-Malesu lobbied the EU-Africa Summit for an extension of the deadline as the two blocs push to thrash a deal ahead of the October deadline set by the EU for the completion of key trade talks.
SADC did not however manage to get a commitment from the EU for an extension although Makgato-Malesu says their request was equally not turned down.
“At the summit they laid their position and we also gave them a counter offer but we managed to get them to allow us to continue as if there was no deadline. So we did not get a deadline extension but we also can’t say (we) failed to get it. The idea is for negotiations to continue without the pressure of the deadline hanging over us,” she said.
Previously the EU had announced that in October they expire a seven-year old market access agreement under which 36 African Caribbean and Pacific states, including Botswana and other SADC countries, will lose the duty and quota free access to the European market they are currently enjoying.
Loss of this favourable access means key local exports to the EU, such as beef, will face intense competition from daunting and more developed rivals such as Brazil, resulting in the possible collapse of the local value chain.
“As chairperson of the SADC bloc, I will be having a teleconference with EU trade commissioner, Karel De Gucht to state our position. A SADC ministers conference will also be held in Botswana in the next few weeks,” she said.
The three outstanding issues in the negotiations are exporting taxes, agricultural safeguards and rules of origin. Export taxes relate to the level of taxation on the export of raw commodities, while agricultural safeguards include the delicate subject of subsidies.
While agreement on the use of general safeguards have been achieved in the EPA negotiations, the SADC countries are trying to push for the inclusion of a provision allowing for the use of special agricultural safeguards, which would be quicker to implement. The EU, however, feels that these would be unnecessary and potentially open to abuse.
Botswana and other SADC states have been negotiating a new trade deal with the EU for 13 years, missing the first deadline of December 2007 set by the World Trade Organisation.
SADC and the EU also missed another December 2010 deadline for the resolution of the complex, political and economically sensitive talks. Last year the region set itself and subsequently missed a June 2013 deadline to conclude a final EPA.
According to a February 2014 report from Bloomberg, Namibia’s Minister of Trade and Industry, Carl Schlettwein said his government does not feel in a position to “renew a trade deal with the European Union by the time an existing agreement expires in October, because the 28-nation bloc is inflexible over food and agricultural imports”. Schlettwein maintained that provisions in the draft agreement eroded the Namibian government’s “policy space to industrialise and to pursue free trade arrangements”.
The Minister stated that, “Namibia wants safeguards in the food and agriculture industries to ensure that local producers don’t have to compete with ‘heavily subsidised’ goods from Europe”.