• Les disciplines dans les APE sur des obstacles traditionnels à l’accès au marché, notamment les droits tarifaires et les contingents ;
• Les dispositions qui prennent en compte les obstacles non-traditionnels au commerce dans les accords de l’OMC et dans les divers APE ;
• Les réglementations et normes techniques et les procédures d’évaluation de la conformité ;
• Les mesures sanitaires et phytosanitaires ;
• La relation entre les règles des APE  sur les obstacles non-traditionnels au commerce et celles qui figurent dans les accords de l’OMC.

L’auteur conclut qu’on peut faire beaucoup, grâce aux APE, pour réduire considérablement les effets de restriction des échanges résultant de la manière dont l’UE  formule et applique les obstacles techniques au commerce ou les réglementations sanitaires et phytosanitaires, et détermine le respect de ces règlementations.  Á cet égard, les APE pourraient être des instruments utiles pour corriger les déficiences des accords de l’OMC, en facilitant la mise en œuvre des dispositions qui présentent un intérêt particulier pour les pays ACP (telles que la transparence, l’équivalence et la régionalisation) à travers des directives de procédure et des dispositifs institutionnels détaillés. En outre, des dispositions renforcées sur l’assistance technique (contenant des engagements budgétaires et des mécanismes de décaissement clairs) pourraient largement contribuer à la prise en compte des contraintes de l’offre qui limitent la capacité des pays ACP à tirer profit du potentiel d’accroissement de l’accès au marché découlant des APE.

ICTSD’s Programme on Dispute Settlement will be exploring this link during a meeting on “Environmental and Trade Law - Coherence and Conflicts” to take place on 12 November, 2010 at 12:30 at the WTO.

Professor Pieter Jan Kuijper from Amsterdam University will present a recent ICTSD study on “Conflicting Rules and Clashing Courts: The Case of Environmental Agreements, Free Trade Agreements and the WTO”.

Benjamin Simmons from UNEP and Kirsten Hillman from the Canadian Mission to the WTO will respond to this presentation and the recommendations of the study with special reference to two relevant examples: Climate change litigation and experiences from the Tuna case.

AGENDA

12:30 LUNCH (provided)

13:00 WELCOMING AND INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY ICTSD

13:15     Presentation of ICTSD Research

Pieter Jan Kuijper (Amsterdam University)
Conflicting rules and clashing courts

13:45     Discussants

Benjamin Simmons (United Nations Environment Programme)
The WTO and litigating climate change

Kirsten Hillman (Permanent Mission of Canada to the WTO)
FTA’s, the WTO and the environment: The latest Tuna case

OPEN DISCUSSION

For registration please contact ICTSD’s Dispute Settlement Programme at mwojtczuk@ictsd.ch

To access the study, please click here.

• L’application de la clause de la nation la plus favorisée, l’article XXIV du GATT et son lien avec les APE
• Les effets de la clause de statu quo sur les taux tarifaires appliqués aux pays  ACP par les membres de l’OMC.
• Les effets politiques et juridiques de la clause de non exécuti on dans les APE.
• L’articulation des mécanismes de règlements de différends de l’APE et de leurs interactions avec celui de l’OMC.

Le document se termine par une série de recommandations d’ordre juridique qui pourraient être utiles à tous les intervenants dans la compréhension des enjeux des négociations des APE.

This Policy Brief examines how these new trade deals with the EU could affect trade flows for specific banana exporting and importing countries around the world.

With the end of the Cotonou agreement and its replacement by the still incomplete EPAs, the rules of origin provisions applicable to exports from different ACP countries became ever more complex, but also less restrictive in some cases. For the ACP countries that were able to initial an Interim EPA, market access to the EU is provided for by an EU Council Regulation that guarantees the continuation of non-reciprocal preferences until the EPAs are implemented; this includes some specific rules of origin as well. For ACP countries that did not sign an Interim EPA, preferential market access to the EU falls within the provisions of the EU’s Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) or the Everything but Arm’s Initiative’(EAI), with their corresponding, different rules of origin.

Interestingly, as noted in the paper, in the treatment of textiles and clothing, as well as fish, the new rules of origin are less restrictive than was the case under the Cotonou Agreement. In the area of textile and clothing, a sector of great importance to the ACP countries, the new rules of origin require only a single transformation (instead of a two-stage transformation as before) in order for exported goods to qualify for preferential market access, which fulfils a long-standing request by ACP exporters. Also, for fish and fish products, a simplification of ownership and crew requirements linked to the vessel used to harvest fish means that some additional flexibility has been extended to ACP exporters. A far more fundamental change to the rules has been agreed with the Pacific Group, where countries that initialled an Interim EPA can now source fish from other regions and still qualify for preferential market access provided that the fish are landed and processed locally. This was also long sought by many ACP countries.

• The EPAs’ disciplines on traditional barriers to market access, including tariffs and quotas;
• Provisions addressing non-traditional barriers to trade in the WTO agreements and the various EPAs;
• Technical regulations, standards and conformity assessments procedures;
• Sanitary and phytosanitary measures;
• The relationship between the EPAs’ rules on non-traditional barriers to trade and those in the WTO agreements.

The author concludes that much can be done through the EPAs to considerably reduce the trade restrictive effects of how the EU frames and applies technical barriers to trade or sanitary, phytosanitary regulations, and determines the compliance with them. In this way, the EPAs could be useful tools to address the deficiencies of the WTO agreements, facilitating the implementation of provisions that are of particular interest to ACP countries (such as transparency, equivalence and regionalization) through detailed procedural guidelines and institutional arrangements. In addition, strengthened provisions on technical assistance (containing clear budgetary commitments and disbursement mechanisms) could go a long way toward addressing the supplyside constraints that limit the ability of ACP countries to take advantage of the increased market access potential of the EPAs.

We expect that this paper, which deals with one of the most difficult and technical complex issues related to RTAs, together with the others in this series on regional trade agreements, will clarify some of the many questions posed by RTAs and help promote a better understanding of the workings of RTAs and how these agreements interact with the multilateral trading system.

“Negotiations such as these are challenging but the moment is right to take a fresh look at the state of discussions so far,” EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said in a statement.

Talks toward a trade deal between the EU and the four Mercosur countries - Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay - were launched in 1999 but hit an impasse in 2004, when negotiators clashed over liberalising trade in agriculture.

Re-launching the talks with Mercosur is a priority for Spain, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency until the end of June.

EU officials say that a deal could boost European exports to the four Mercosur countries by roughly €4.5 billion each year. The European Commission also noted in a statement that the South American bloc “has not yet concluded any free trade agreements with any major competitor of the EU.”

The European Union - the South American bloc’s biggest trading partner and largest investor - accounts for just over one fifth of all of Mercosur’s international trade. Trade between the two regional groupings totalled US$ 84 billion last year alone.

In addition to trade in goods, the proposed deal would also cover services, investment, government procurement and sustainable development.

The negotiations could hit a few bumps as negotiators turn their attention to liberalising trade in agriculture - the subject on which the talks broke down six years ago.

Copa-Cogeca, a major European farmers’ association, warned last week that a trade deal with Mercosur “would lead to a substantial contraction in the EU agriculture sector, threatening 28 million jobs.” The group also argued that producers in Mercosur countries “do not have to comply with the same high food safety, animal welfare, and environmental standards that EU farmers do.”

“We will address any adverse impact on certain sectors with specific measures, in particular in agriculture,” European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said in a statement.

The talks will be officially re-launched at an EU-Mercosur summit in Madrid on Monday. That meeting will also witness the signing of a trade deal between the EU and Colombia and Peru. Negotiations toward that agreement were finalised in March.

ICTSD reporting.

Some of the issues for ACPs examined by the paper include a discussion of the difficulties of managing and coordinating the various regional groupings in the negotiations, the potential complementarities and conflicts with other existing international agreements (multilateral environmental agreements and WTO agreements), the challenges related to the implementation of new environmental standards, and the settlement of disputes as well as the strengthening of environmental capacities.

The main conclusion of the paper is that the incorporation of environmental provisions within the EPAs may present some benefits to ACP countries. These include increased enforcement of environmental laws and the raising of domestic environmental standards. However, developing countries will have to seek ways to mitigate some risks and challenges associated with internal and regional coordination in negotiations, legal burdens of the negotiating process itself and the implementation of obligations as well as the establishment and maintenance of appropriate levels of environmental protection and institution building. ACP countries will need appropriate packages of technical assistance, capacity building, and environmental cooperation to meet this new environmental agenda in their trade agreements.

Estos acuerdos tienen y tendrán sin duda muchas implicaciones no sólo en el ámbito comercial sino que definirán aspectos fundamentales en el diseño de políticas económicas y de desarrollo sostenible en esrtos países.

Con el fin de apoyar a los equipos negociadores de Colombia, Ecuador y Perú en la mesa de comercio y desarrollo sostenible del acuerdo con la UE, ICTSD junto a la Corporación Andina de Fomento (en cooperación con la Comisión Economica para América Latina y el Caribe) organizan un ” Taller andino sobre comercio y desarrollo sostenible en las negociaciones de un Acuerdo Comercial entre la Unión Europea y Colombia, Ecuador y Perú”.

Dicho evento tiene lugar los días 25 y 26 de marzo en Lima, Perú.