Six months on: What shift is there in the EU approach to EPA negotiations?

With the UK presidency of the EU Council of Ministers pending (July 2005), EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson is coming under increased pressure to modify the European Commission’s approach to Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. Criticism and pressure for change is not only coming from an increasingly vocal and active campaign by non-governmental development agencies in the UK, Europe and Africa (see http://www.stopepa.org/ for details of the campaign), but also from several more official sources. These include the Africa Commission established by prime minister Tony Blair, the inquiry by the House of Commons Select Committee on International Development into EU-ACP EPA negotiations1 and the joint position paper adopted by the UK Department of Trade and Industry and Department for International Development.2 Commissioner Mandelson has responded to this criticism by modifying and extending the rhetoric on the centrality of development concerns to the EC’s approach to EPA negotiations. However it is still unclear to what extent the Commissioner’s rhetoric is being taken up in practice by EC trade negotiators and EC aid officials. As the Zambian trade minister, Dipak Patel, has recently declared: what Peter has said in his speech to the LSE [London School of Economics] was excellent, but perhaps his negotiators need to read it more than we do. 3