Fisheries • Volume 2 • Number 3 • October 2008

ICTSD update: Fisheries in the ACP-EU EPA negotiations

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Fisheries are an important source of employment, export revenue and food security in many African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries – and the EU is their main trading partner in this sector. Negotiations of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), which will replace unilateral trade preferences currently offered by the EU with reciprocal preferences, are ongoing. The ACP countries are concerned, however, that the new EPAs might negatively affect their fisheries sectors, and are looking for solutions in this area.

A growing sector in international trade, fisheries are one of the few areas in which ACP countries’ participation in world trade is increasing. The EU accounts for around 75 percent of ACP fishery exports, and they are concerned that the EPA negotiations could lead to a loss of preferences and decrease in fisheries revenues. Due to these worries, a number of ACP countries decided to initialise Interim Economic Partnership Agreements (IEPAs) or agreed on full EPAs with the EU at the end of 2007.

Apart from a loss of preferences, ACP concerns include tariff escalation and peaks, the reform of rules of origin, and new EU regulations on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures. The inclusion of investment in the EPA negotiations also adds a new dimension that warrants careful consideration. Overall, the negotiating process has been complex, challenging and divisive for the ACP groupings.
In order to facilitate a frank, open and solutions-focused discussion of these ACP issues, ICTSD and the Commonwealth Secretariat, in cooperation with GTZ and the Southern Africa Global Competitiveness Hub, organised a Regional Dialogue on Fisheries Aspects of ACP-EU EPA Negotiation at the end of August 2008 in Windhoek, Namibia.

At the dialogue, policy-makers, negotiators, representatives of the private sector and other stakeholders from ACP countries reviewed the substance of the fisheries provisions contained in IEPA/EPA agreements to assess their significance from a trade and sustainable development perspective and derive implications for the future course of negotiations toward full EPAs. Participants converged on the need to ensure outcomes that would effectively improve livelihood and food security, ensure meaningful market access, and achieve broad sustainable development objectives in the ACP countries.

Overall, participants noted an urgent need for regions with IEPAs to ensure satisfaction with fisheries provisions already negotiated, and for regions without interim EPAs to learn from other regions to better articulate their negotiating positions.

Concerns raised included EU preferential rules of origin (RoO) in EPAs, revolving around definitional issues for ‘wholly obtained’ and ‘sufficiently worked or processed’ products. While the new RoO will somewhat simplify conditions for qualification of ‘wholly obtained’, concerns remain with respect to demands that fish caught in a country’s Exclusive Economic Zone automatically qualify as wholly originating.

On ‘sufficiently worked or processed products’ for fish, two issues remain: a possible extension of the new value tolerance (or de minimis) provision of 15 percent for non-originating inputs of fresh or frozen fish in fish products; and second, a possible extension of the global sourcing RoO currently offered by the EU to the Pacific to all other ACP regions. The global sourcing rule would allow for fish to be deemed originating from the ACP country regardless of where it was caught or the status of a vessel’s flag, as long as it was transformed into a pre-cooked, packaged or canned product.

ACP countries continue to demand flexibility and support to comply with stringent EU SPS regulations. Key challenges discussed at the meeting included the costs of HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) systems both in terms of equipment and skilled human resources, inadequate laboratory facilities, and the lack of a business-friendly environment for the exploitation of inland fisheries. Participants noted that the increasing range and complexity of SPS requirements - which have to be administered by the public sector but implemented and paid for by the private sector - warrants a much closer relationship between the two in the form of public/private consultative partnerships.

Generally, participants felt that numerous challenges relating to non-tariff measures remain to be addressed to enable meaningful benefits. As several ACP regions enter the final stage in their EPA negotiations, rules and disciplines on trade in fish and fishery products are likely to remain under scrutiny given the critical importance of fisheries for employment, livelihood, export revenues and development in a large number of ACP countries.