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Trade Negotiations Insights April 2008
Trade Negotiations Insights April 2008…
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EPA Negotiations Update
EPAs dominate EU-ACP Parliament talks The controversial nature of the EPAs dominated the agenda of the EU–ACP Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA) held in Ljubljana, Slovenia on March 17-20. MEPs and ACP Parliamentarians voiced discontent over the last-minute nature of the deals and the subsequent impact on regional integration and development. “Conflict and contention has mired…
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WTO Roundup: Rare movement in NAMA talks, but Doha deal still uncertain
After months of virtual deadlock, some hints of flexibility have emerged in the Doha Round talks on trade in industrial goods, officials in Geneva said. Although it remains unclear whether governments will be able to bridge their differences, many countries are now reportedly willing to consider some potential ideas circulated by the chair of the…
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LDCs rising: the growth of technical capacity
‘Technical assistance’ and ‘capacity building’ are phrases often bandied about in trade policy circles – generally, how poor countries need more of both. Depending on who is talking, technical assistance and capacity building mean different things. To name just a few: better equipping government officials to identify their countries’ interests and pursue them in trade negotiations,…
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Renegotiate the Cariforum EPA
The EPA is a treaty that is legally binding, of indefinite duration and will be very difficult to amend once it is in force. It covers a wide range of subject areas that have hitherto been within the jurisdiction of domestic or regional policy, and which few people in the region know about or understand.…
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Accommodating regional realities: practical issues and challenges for the SADC EPA negotiations
Understanding regional realities There is a general understanding in Europe of the need to accommodate regional realities in the EPA negotiation process. However, what is not so generally understood is the nature of these regional realities. This should come as no surprise, since they vary greatly from region to region. In the Southern African Customs Union…
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The legal status of the initialled EPAs
By the end of 2007, 20 countries in Africa and the Pacific had initialled interim Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the EU, covering trade in goods.2 Fifteen Caribbean states initialled a ‘full EPA’, covering areas beyond trade in goods. What is the legal status of these initialled agreements and what are the opportunities for renegotiation,…
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Interim EPAs in Africa: What’s in them? And what’s next?
By the end of 2007, only eighteen African states (including most non-LDCs and some LDCs) had initialled interim EPAs, as had two Pacific non-LDCs (Fiji and Papua New Guinea), while Caribbean countries went further and approved full EPAs.What have they agreed to? What are the main implementation challenges, some of which will require support from…