Botswana, EU drop curtain of silence ahead of EPA talks

MBONGENI MGUNI
Staff Writer | Friday April 23, 2010 00:00

 

The Brussels meeting, due next week, will be the first meeting of negotiating teams since Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique signed an interim Economic Partnership Agreement(iEPA) with the EU last June. Since then, several changes at the EU's helm and the economic recession have forced a pause in negotiations, robbing the process of the momentum it gathered between 2008 and last year.

Botswana, the SADC-EPA Group's sitting chair, is scheduled to send a 'sizeable' delegation to Brussels, led by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Banny Molosiwa.

The EU will be represented by senior officials of its trade directorate responsible for southern Africa.

Reluctant to avoid 'jinxing' the forthcoming talks, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) and EU officials have adopted a code of silence on all matters relating to the EPA negotiations.

Trade Ministry Deputy Permanent Secretary, Boniface Mphetlhe, said early this week that any discussion on the forthcoming talks would be pre-emptive and would also damage the 'sensitive' nature of the negotiations.

'The long and short of it is that the negotiations are still ongoing and we do not have a final position at the moment that we can inform Batswana about. We do not want to pre-empt anything because this meeting is quite sensitive and it would be difficult for us to go into any details at the moment.

'It would be better to engage the negotiating team once they return from Brussels,' he said. Through their local office, officials from the EU's trade directorate said it would not be imprudent to discuss the agenda or anticipated outcome of the Brussels meeting, before it takes place as this would essentially influence the outcome of the meeting.

However, sources on both sides say the meeting will revolve around 'unresolved' issues emanating from the June iEPA and the refusal by Namibia and South Africa to sign on.

Thus, the Brussels meeting will look at the fulfilment of commitments by parties to the iEPA, negotiations towards a full EPA and issues with parties that have not signed with the EU.

The EU is expected to bring up the non-implementation of certain provisions of the iEPA to the countries that have signed it.

Under the iEPA, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique were to notify the World Trade Organisation and also begin implementation of the agreement within their own economies.

The EU argues that since June, the four states have enjoyed duty-andquota-free access to Europe for a wide range of goods, while they are yet to initiate the liberalisation of their own markets in progress towards a substantive EPA. The signing parties will also discuss the harmonisation of key tariff issues, as well as terms of technical obligations forming part of the iEPA.

For countries outside the iEPA, the meeting in Brussels presents another opportunity to negotiate their positions with regard to the offer made by the EU. South Africa, Namibia and Angola opted out of the June interim agreement, citing various objections to the EU offer. This action caused a 'split' within SACU, with Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland reaching an agreement with a third party, and South Africa and Namibia holding back.

Ahead of the Brussels meeting, reports have appeared indicating that signatories to the iEPA and those abstaining could group themselves under the SACU umbrella and present a united front to the EU.

Media reports on the Special Customs Union Council of Ministers meeting in Johannesburg in January indicate that SACU members have agreed not to advance on implementing the iEPA until the issues raised by South Africa and Namibia have been dealt with.

'The Council agreed that notification, ratification and implementation of the iEPA by those that have signed should not be prioritised unless progress is being made in addressing the internal and external unresolved negotiating issues that still exist,' reads a statement reportedly emanating from the Johannesburg meeting.

It adds: 'These issues (raised by South Africa and Namibia) include the alignment of market access tariff offers, rules of origin issues, safeguarding the agreement reached during the Swartkopmund meeting, addressing the remaining unresolved negotiating issues and firm commitments from the EC with respect to inclusion of these solutions in the final EPA'.

With senior SACU trade and industry ministers as well as heads of state having met in Windhoek this week, it is expected that next week's meeting will feature galvanised, pumped-up and well-briefed negotiators.

However, even as a bloc, it is likely that member states will put their individual interests ahead of SACU's, particularly those whose exports benefit from continuation of the EU's open door policy.