EPA Review Annex Documents - DFID

development assistance in the EPA. However, negotiating temporary movement of labour
has been such a sensitive issue for the EU politically. It is not surprising there was little
progress in the EPA negotiations.
With only two countries in the region, Fiji and Papua New Guinea have signed interim EPA
with the EU, mainly due to the concerns of their tuna and canned tuna exports and Fiji sugar
export to the EU. Given the nature of small islands countries with similar factors
endowments, it would be better to use resources in other areas than in promoting regional
integration.
4. Conclusion
The EPA process clearly exposed the weak regional cohesion in most EPA regions in which
diverging national interests often prevailed over regional agenda, lack of political
commitment to find the compromise over their differences. It is fair to say that many ACP
countries engaged in EPA negotiations with reluctant and with prime objective of maintaining
their preferential market access to the EU while making the least possible commitments in
terms of opening up of their own markets. The study edited by Bilal and Stevens (2009)
reports that interim agreements with Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Cameroon have been agreed
on the basis of draft texts proposed by the Commission at the last minute; and some interim
agreements have not been seen nor checked by the ACP technical experts and were agreed
on only at political level. However, many ACP countries should shoulder their share of
responsibilities, the 2007 deadline was well known for years and during this period, leading
up to it many African countries did not seem to prepare their market access offers.
In their current form, most interim EPAs will do little to advance regional trade integration in
Africa with possibly one exception of the EAC. The EAC entered interim agreement as a
custom union and agreed on a common schedule of imports liberalisation from the EU. This
facilitated the liberalisation of intra-EAC trade in the same products. Bypassing the formal
regional negotiation structures was potentially weakening the regional solidarity. The
fragmentation of countries has led to tensions within the regions and put non-LDCs in a
difficult situation, the choice seemed to be entering the bilateral interim agreement with the
EU individually disrupting the regional integration, a political costly option; or aligning with
the region and fall back to GSP, an economically costly option for the countries concerned.
Inevitably, some countries have favoured national interests over those of the region, as they
did not see the need to find regional compromise on their exclusion basket. Notably, this is
the case of many ESA signatories which are not yet integrated. Therefore, it is safe to say
that all others interim EPAs have not reinforced regional integration efforts in Africa.
Conducting interim agreements bilaterally provides the opportunity to safeguard market
access for the countries where the regional solutions were not possible in the short-pressed
time. The bilateral approach adopted by the EU and some ACP counterparts seem at odds
with the objective of EPA to enhance regional integration. To address the problem caused by
bilateral interim agreements, the 2008 negotiations have been conducted at the regional
level and all regions seemed to show good will to harmonise trade regimes toward the EU at
the regional level. However, different starting positions and interests among members with
regional groupings remain.
All in all, four points are apparent. First, any international agreement or treaty could
potentially have effects of lock-in and enhancing credibility of reforms, in this sense, the EPA
is no exception. The question is whether the EPA adds more extras in terms of incentives,
mechanisms to enhance regional integration. The EPA could help accelerate regional trade
integration by supporting trade facilitation and capacity building for making and implementing
open trade policies and by financing the development of regional infrastructure. However,
the institutions and rules are not the only problems and may not be the immediate challenge
to boosting African trade and intra-African trade. The European model, institution-led
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