EPA Review Annex Documents - DFID

Commission was forced to take up the serious challenge of ownership of the process by
rejecting EU’s initial plan to send consultants and economists to ECOWAS, to help in the
technical analysis. The EPA has facilitated the awareness and use of regional and
national experts which hitherto was lacking, in particular because of scepticism
regarding external consultants as the outcomes of their studies become suspicious.
Lessons
The main lessons can be summarised as follows:
• It has taught West Africa in general and Nigeria in particular to brace up to realities of
tough trade negotiation
• ECOWAS countries have to get more serious in negotiations, making effective
preparations towards negotiations and the need to have an adequate stock of trained
manpower to negotiate
• Adequate impact analysis is crucial to correct initial positions and reach compromise
Dominican Republic
Expectations
As suggested above, the expectations of EPAs were based on obtaining market access
in certain key products. Although prior to the start of the negotiations only about 10% of
Dominican exports were directed to the European Union, but concentrated in a few
sectors. For banana and rum producers, the EU market was the primary market of
exports, and these and other sectors such as cigars, textiles, footwear, cocoa and
vegetable producers had no preferential treatment under GSP. From a defensive point of
view, after implementing the D.R.-CAFTA, the protectionist constituency was already
very eroded and the D.R. position was always less defensive than its regional partners,
Resource constraints impact on negotiation
No major resource constraints were identified.
Regional negotiation and integration
The fact that the D.R. had previously negotiated an important trade agreement with the
United States, which included all the market opening topics covered by the EPA, gave it
also a certain degree of tolerance to a regional approach, particularly taking into account
that for many issues, such as services, investments, government procurement, and
fiscal concerns regarding market opening in goods, the CARIFORUM overall position
tended to be more conservative than the D.R.’s. Also the role of the CRNM facilitating
the formulation of regional positions was crucial for the D.R.
Intangibles
The EPA process has really improved the regional integration process by increasing the
understanding by D.R. negotiators of CARICOM institutions. As a result, the D.R. has
formally applied for CARICOM membership.
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