RTÉ Europe Editor Sean Whelan takes a look at Economic Partnership Agreements and wonders if they provide a fair deal.
The first summit in seven years between the European Union and the 52 nation African Union takes place in Lisbon, Portugal, on the weekend of 8 and 9 December.
Already its being overshadowed by a row over the presence at the summit of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe. As a result, British Prime Minster Gordon Brown is boycotting the event in protest.
The Zimbabwe controversy may obscure other aspects of the summit, not least changes in the nature of the trade, aid and development relationship between the two continents.
Most development experts and campaigners say Africa needs better trade terms if it is to improve the living standards of her peoples. Right now the European Union is trying to introduce a new series of trade deals called Economic Partnership Agreement (EPAs), before a year end deadline imposed by the World Trade Organisation.
But a group of Irish development NGOs think the EU should slow down and give Africa more time to consider the deals.
Representatives from Trócaire, Concern, Amnesty international, Christian Aid Ireland, the Irish Missionary Union, Sightsavers, Worldvision and Dóchas put their concerns to EU development Commissioner Louis Michel.
They have joined a long line of complainants, including churches, MEPs and African politicians in urging the EU to slow down the EPA process.
The EPAs are a new type of economic agreement covering trade issues between the EU and up to 80 states that make up the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group.
Many of these are former European colonies that had tariff free and quota free access to EU markets for their goods under an agreement known as the Lome Convention. But that fell foul of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, and it has to stop by the end of the year.
The EPAs are designed to replace the Lome Convention agreements, but be in accordance with WTO rules.
The EU is scrambling to meet the end of year deadline, and is trying to get the ACP countries to sign off on EPAs. But many in Africa, in particular, are concerned that the deals may no be to their advantage.
Acknowledging their own technical weaknesses in international trade negotiations, a number of African states and organisations have been calling for a slow down in the process, so they can look at the small print in the deals, and seek outside help if they need to.
'Our partners in Africa are saying they need more time', says Helen Keogh, chairperson of Dóchas - the umbrella organisation for Irish development NGOs.
'We felt we had to voice the concerns of our African partners to the Commission. But the Commission say they have to begin the process, and I don’t expect there will be a change in that view.'
Development Commissioner Louis Michel (a former Belgian foreign minister) says there is no point in further delay. 'Waiting or postponing reforms will not give Africa access to international trade – and they need that trade to succeed with development.'
Commissioner Michel believes that just giving aid to the African states isn’t enough – it has to be combined with a trade policy that will give real benefits to the African states. That’s what the EPAs are designed to do.
While they grant tarriff and quota free access to European markets, critics say they also demand the dismantling of tariff barriers and other restrictions on European goods and services – and they claim that could damage or destroy African industries.
(The EPAs also call for the dismantling of trade barriers between the ACP states, which are sometimes higher than those imposed on EU goods).
But Louis Michel disputes this. 'This is not a brutal liberalisation that will start on the first of January 2008', he says. 'It will be phased in very slowly, at their own pace, over a 20 year period.
And there will be an asymmetric arrangement, so we will continue to pay taxes to access their markets, but they will not pay taxes to access our market.' He also says the EU will set up a fiscal fund to compensate ACP states for the loss of revenues as tariffs and import duties are reduced.
He says the details of the agreements are well known to the ACP states, and there is no need for delay: 'If they are not ready to make reforms now, they will not be ready in a year. The problems are well known, the financial issues are well known'. 
Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell, a member of the Parliaments development committee, was in Kigali, Rwanda last week, attending the joint parliamentary session of the EU-ACP nations, where the issue of EPAs was high on the agenda.
A declaration, agreed by both the MEPs and the ACP delegates, 'noted' the pressure from the European Commission to agree EPAs, and urged the Commission to acknowledge that more time is needed to assess the agreements, given that meaningful negotiations 'only started in the past two years'.
Mr Mitchell, the vice president of the EP delegation, said that new member states of the EU had traditionally enjoyed derogations on sensitive issues, and that a similar approach must be available to ACP countries. 'No country should be asked to shoulder an unbearable burden. That said, protectionism does not work, and Ireland – which had 50 years of protectionism – is evidence of this.'
He will travel to Lisbon for a pre-summit meeting between the 25 MEPs of the development committee and 25 MPs from the Pan African Parliament, to discuss the EPA issue, and the wider EU –AU strategy.
Fianna Fáil MEP Eoin Ryan, who attended the meetings with the Irish NGOs.
He said the issues did not affect not the poorest of the poor, who already benefit from free access to EU markets under the 'everything but arms' initiative (all exports – except weapons – to the EU from the 25 poorest states are tax, tarriff and quota free).
Instead it was relatively 'middle income' countries like Ivory Coast that stood to lose out (by over a billion Euro) if EU Africa trade isn’t WTO compliant soon.
Sean Whelan
