Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 12 • Number 34 • 16th October 2008

Caribbean Nations Sign EPA with EU

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At least 13 Caribbean nations signed a far-reaching Economic Partnership Agreement, or EPA, with the EU at a ceremony in Barbados on Wednesday. The pact covers trade in goods, services and investments, and offers development assistance to the Caribbean countries that join it.

It remained unclear on Wednesday whether Guyana and Haiti, which have opposed the deal in the past, would join the other members of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) in signing the agreement.

The finalisation of the EPA comes after months of intensive negotiations.

“I just feel that we’ve talked around this thing long enough,” Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding said. “I think we must get busy because this is not an agreement that is going to shower down benefits on us … we have to reach in there and grab those benefits and put ourselves in a position where we can do this and I really want us to focus on that,” he said.

Some non-governmental organisations and dissenters within the Caribbean have said that the EPA will hurt Caribbean producers by exposing them to competition with their European counterparts.

The agreement, one of a series of EPAs that Brussels hopes to negotiate with groups of former European colonies, is meant to serve as a continuation of the Cotonou Agreement, a nonreciprocal scheme under which the EU provided duty-free access to most exports from African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries. That agreement expired at the end of last year.

“Caricom to Ink EPA,” RADIO JAMAICA, 15 October 2008; “Regions Sign EPA Today,” JAMAICA GLEANER, 15 October 2008.