CARICOM & EPA Negotiations

Caricom 'carry go bring come'
Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Source: Jamaica Observer

Tomorrow, the Caribbean Community (Caricom) member states will assemble in Kingston to spend two days in a retreat on the conduct of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations. This is hard to believe.

The meeting is further evidence that the tradition of complacency about preparing for the future continues to be well-established in Caricom and appears to be in no danger of being replaced by a proactive approach towards inevitable economic change.

The resistance to facing reality is well illustrated by the inexcusable postponement of the restructuring of the sugar and banana industries. This delay has reduced the prospects for attaining international competitiveness and for orderly restructuring.

The recently completed EPA negotiations with the European Union is an opportunity to take a strategic approach to the future economic development of the region. Yet nothing, that we know of, has been done to plan the implementation of the EPA to allow the exporters of goods and services to seize the opportunities in a market of 450 million consumers.

Instead of focusing on implementation, Caricom is devoting time and scarce money to reviewing the structure and process of the EPA negotiations. This is not the best use of the tight human and financial resources of the region. The negotiations are over, and the structure and process of the negotiations, from the ministerial to the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM), have produced an EPA. It is the most complex and comprehensive pact which the region has embarked upon. And it is the only one of its kind, as no other ACP region was able to complete one. The institutional arrangements which accomplished this cannot be all bad. The old adage is relevant: If it aint broke, don't fix it.

What is more important is for the governments of the region to move quickly to complete their national review and approval process. The Caricom Secretariat must produce a plan and schedule for implementation as Jamaica's Prime Minister Bruce Golding requested in early January. This should include consideration of the establishment of an EPA implementation unit similar to the CSME Unit, while the CRNM continues with the ongoing and planned negotiations, such as those with Canada.

We urge Caricom to dismiss any proposal that the function of external negotiations should be resumed by its secretariat, given the respective performances of the two institutions. It's no secret that the secretariat is less able to undertake external trade negotiations now than when it was necessary to create the CRNM over 10 years ago. Surely, memories cannot be that short.

Regrettably, while Caricom is fiddling, it is jeopardising the opportunity to commence the negotiations with Canada, which were first mooted seven years ago and revitalised by the joint Canada-Caricom decision during Prime Minister Harper's visit to Barbados last year.

It is understandable that the region could not start while it was fully absorbed in the EPA negotiations. But since mid-December, there has been no engagement with Canada. Meanwhile, the Dominican Republic, Central America and the developing countries that compete with Caricom are clamouring to negotiate with Canada.

Enough of this Caricom 'carry go bring come'.

Independence and Integration

Independence and regional integration process
Source: Searchlight Newspapar - SVG

Published 26.OCT.07

Tomorrow, October 27, 2007, the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, at home and in the diaspora, celebrate their 28th anniversary of the attainment of national independence. It has been almost three decades since the smaller islands in the Eastern Caribbean, stretching from Grenada in the south to St. Kitts/Nevis in the north, all took the bold step of joining the international community as independent nation states. This followed the fruitless search for Caribbean unity from the ill-fated West Indian Federation through the various permutations of regional nationhood right to independence as separate national entities.

Significantly, just two years after independence, SVG teamed up with its newly-independent neighbours to establish the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). Beginning with a security and national disaster focus, the OECS itself has evolved to the point where it forms a tight inner concentric ring within the Caribbean Single Market, and the goal of full economic and political integration among these states is very much on the cards.

So how do these processes fit together? Is there any contradiction between the celebration of independent nationhood and the search for wider forms of unity? It is an undoubted fact of life that much has changed on the international stage since we took our first steps along the independence path, much of it to the detriment of mini-states like ours. The international trading climate and the pre-eminence of the “free trade” ideology have made it more and more difficult for small states to survive as “independent” entities. Even large, powerful nations today seek succour in larger trading and economic blocs.

The Caribbean, and the OECS in particular, has little choice in following this path. Fortunately for us, it blends well with our own historical and strategic realities, making it much easier to proceed along these lines. Yet, there are stumbling blocks, of our own creation, in our way. Among these are constitutional limitations and a false sense of petty nationalism, bringing with it blinkers and imagined barriers to political integration. These continue to hinder progress towards regional integration, even as the rest of the world moves in the opposite direction.

Take the European Union (EU) with whom we are negotiating a regional economic pact. In 1981 when the OECS was set up, there were but nine European states involved in the integration project. States such as Poland, Bulgaria and Romania were part of the Soviet bloc. Today, 27 of these developed nations sit on one side of the table negotiating with us, even as we argue among ourselves about so-called “illegal immigration” from sister Caribbean nations. Time and history are not on our side. As we revel in the achievements of national independence, let us reflect on how much further we can go and how much more we can achieve our goals of poverty eradication and sustainable development if we can get our integration process right.