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Original Post Date: 2010-06-08 Time: 17:00:01 Posted By: News Poster
By Desie Heita
Windhoek – Talks have resumed over the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and European Union’s interim Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).
Central to the discussion was the inclusion of concerns raised by Namibia in the final full EPA deal.
Negotiations are now scheduled for July, in Belgium, with senior officials meeting in September in as yet unnamed country in southern Africa.
EU and SADC negotiators met on May 25 and 26 to discuss the way forward in the Economic Partnership Agreement talks.
“They addressed outstanding issues, such as the signing of the interim EPA for countries still pending, its notification and implementation, and the way ahead in ‘full’, comprehensive regional EPA negotiations,” says a statement from the EU.
The meeting also addressed a compromise reached during the Swakopmund discussions in March 2009 with a view to include the compromise in the final, full EPA deal.
“The consistency and alignment between the interim EPA and the EU-South Africa Trade and Development Co-operation Agreement (TDCA) were also discussed. Talks tackled Rules of Origin and services and investment as well. Further technical negotiations will take place in Brussels in July, and a senior officials’ meeting is scheduled to take place in September in the SADC EPA Group region,” says the statement.
Southern African countries have recently taken a collective stance that exerts additional pressure on the EU, and thrown arms of comradeship around Namibia, which stands to lose out more if the implementation of the interim EPA is to go ahead as is.
Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland, who have signed the interim EPA, have vowed not to implement it in their economies until the European Union attends to the grievances raised by Namibia, South Africa and Angola.
Adding more pressure on European Union is an agreement by the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) member states, that there is “need to carefully examine the risks that each member state faces in signing or not signing”.
SACU countries meet in Botswana on June 18, where each state will put up the gains versus losses of not signing interim EPA agreements.
The outcome from this meeting will go to the SACU Heads of State summit for them to take a final decision.
South Africa trades with Europe through the Trade and Development Co-operation Agreement, while Angola’s trade with EU includes everything but arms market access because of the country’s classification as a least developed country.
It was Namibia that insisted that South Africa be included in the EPA negotiations so that there is a single trading agreement for all SACU member states.
The seven countries have also agreed that from now on they will “focus on the negotiation of final a EPA that would include the safeguards that we seek and which could be supported by all parties”.
Namibia remains adamant in her conviction not to sign, while the defiant European Union’s new Trade Commissioner, Karel de Gucht, does not wish to continue negotiating an interim EPA.
The European Commission tried applying pressure by pushing for the notification of the interim EPA to the World Trade Organisation, and its ratification and implementation by the four countries that signed the agreement.
This would have opened a legal challenge over Namibia’s access to duty-free quota free – a treatment reserved for African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries that have binding contractual agreements with the EU. Notifying the World Trade Organisation and implementing the interim EPA was designed to force Namibia to make a decision, which, if it were to refuse to sign, meant Namibia’s goods would go under the only other trade regime available – the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP). This is where goods attract about 14 percent of ad valorem and an additional couple of 1000 euro per tonnage of goods entering the EU.
“Doing so would certainly have resulted in the exclusion of Namibia from the current access that we have into the European market, and very significantly, also probably the break-up of SACU,” Minister of Trade and Industry Hage Geingob said earlier.
Geingob said the permanent solution to the current problem is not simply for Namibia to concede and sign the agreement, even though the absence of finding a solution could spell an end to the customs union.
“We cannot sign an agreement just for the sake of giving in to the demands of the other side. Signing holds serious economic and policy consequences for Namibia,” he said.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 8 June 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201006080806.html?viewall=1