POLITICS-DEVELOPMENT: EU-ACP Joint Assembly Envisions Enhanced Co- Operation

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Brian Kenety

BRUSSELS, Mar 24 2000 (IPS) - The twice-annual joint assembly of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group and the European Union (EU) states, meeting in the Nigerian capital of Abuja this week, end Thursday with general promises to intensify both north-south and regional co-operation by improving the functioning of the assembly.

However some ACP-state delegates reportedly complained that the Europeans, who were all members of the European Parliament (MEPs), had dominated the proceedings.

Assembly Co-Presidents MEP John Corrie (United Kingdom) and Serge Clair (Mauritius) pledged to create a working group to examine whether the forum was overly geared towards parliamentary procedures, and had, therefore, inadvertently muffled the ACP delegates.

Although the assembly itself has no executive powers, it has been a major influence in shaping proposals before EU and ACP executive bodies.

However, in future, the assembly (to be known as the Joint Parliamentary Assembly), will play an “enhanced political role” in the implementation of the new Partnership Agreement on Trade and Aid between the EU and ACP states.

The new agreement, concluded on Feb 3, will replace the Lome IV Convention, which expired on Feb 29.

Health, especially the scourge of AIDS, malaria, river blindness and other diseases, and conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Nigeria and elsewhere were all touched upon.

As was a call for debt cancellation for Madagascar and Mozambique, in the aftermath of recent floods and cyclones.

But the focal point of the assembly was the adoption of a report, by a special working group, on the future of EU-ACP relations. This is embodied in the successor to the convention, to be signed in Suva, Fiji on June 4.

Corrie said that the new pact would emphasise democracy, human rights and good governance in the appropriation of the European Development Fund (EDF), through which the EU’s financial aid budget is administered.

He said the emphasis stemmed from the perception that the 45 billion US dollars committed to ACP countries under Lome I-IV since 1975, did not appear to have benefited the common people.

“We are in support of efforts to alleviate poverty in developing nations, especially the 39 highly indebted countries, but we cannot do it alone. This must be done in partnership,” the Panafrican News Agency quoted Corrie as saying.

Addressing delegates at the opening ceremony of the assembly on Mar 20, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, President of host country Nigeria, said that the fight against fraud and corruption should be made a condition for allocating aid.

He said he saw nothing wrong with the inclusion of good governance in the successor trade and aid agreement to Lome IV. “Wouldn’t that be the best way to ‘re-motivate’ public opinion in Europe, which clearly shows signs of aid fatigue?” he asked.

Obasanjo said aid fatigue was a result of the failure of donors to halt the deterioration in the socio-economic and political conditions of ACP states despite more than two decades of co- operation.

Recipient countries were also disillusioned by their own inability to achieve rapid growth and development under trade and aid policies with their development partners, said Obasanjo.

Alleged human rights abuses during five years of military rule in Nigeria had led to the funding of major EU projects there to be suspended and reinforced with limited sanctions.

On Mar 22, that assistance was symbolically restored during a signing ceremony for three EU funding agreements worth 32.8 million euros for project in Nigeria’s troubled Niger delta region.

Luis Armado, EU ruling Council President-in-Office, and EU Development Commissioner Poul Nielson told the assembly on Mar 21 that development assistance budgets were indeed under heavy pressure, but that the new agreement reflected the EU’s continuing commitment to providing substantial aid funding for its ACP partners.

Nielson, whilst calling for in-depth reforms in the EU as well as in the ACP states, held up the new agreement as an example of effective partnership between the developed and developing worlds.

He and Armado said they were keen to reassure the European public that the total amount of 23 billion euros, combining previous, unused and new EDF resources available in aid for the next seven years, would be spent wisely and efficiently.

The level of EDF funding for the new convention, up five percent in nominal terms from the previous EDF but which represents and decline in real terms, has been called “substantial” by Nielson.

Assembly co-Presidents Corrie and Clair welcomed Nigeria’s commitment to good governance, which, along with the repatriation of illegal immigrants had been a major stumbling block in negotiations on the agreement to be signed in Fiji.

John Horne, Minister of Trade of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and President of the ACP executive Council, said in a Mar 21 statement that demands by some EU Member States that illegal immigrants be returned to ACP sates which had merely been crossed in transit were untenable and had no place in international law.

However, he said he was pleased with the “equitable solution” on the thorny topic of good governance, which will be classified as a “fundamental” and not an “essential” element in the new Partnership Agreement.

This means that co-operation will not be suspended if the good governance principle is reached.

Nielson noted in a speech that in “special cases of urgency – particularly serious and flagrant violations of one of the essential elements,” measures would be taken immediately and the procedure would be applied “not only in cases of corruption involving EDF money, but also more widely” in any country where the EU is financially involved “and where corruption constitutes an obstacle to development.”

On the highly sensitive issue of trade liberalisation, Horne said that the ACP was satisfied with the compromise agreement on an eight-year transition period before new regional partnership agreements with the EU were introduced.

Under the new deal, the non-reciprocal ACP trade preferences would be partially replaced by regional free trade agreements, with options and a timetable that took the special needs of the ACP states into account.

But Horne said he was disturbed by rumours that some third countries might object to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) waiver for ACP states during the roll-over period until WTO- compatible arrangements were introduced, condemning such objections as “unprincipled blackmail.”

The South African representative highlighted protectionism by developed countries as a factor in the ACP’s declining share of the EU market, despite Lome preferences.

Corrie noted that only six percent of African trade is with other African countries and said there is “huge potential for increasing the value of intra-ACP commerce.”

He and Clair both said they saw a regional approach to EU-ACP co-operation as the way forward. In this regard, Clair welcomed a proposal to hold regular ACP parliamentary-style meetings at the regional level.