By Glenys Kinnock
BRUSSELS, May 14 2008 (IPS)

White banners were draped across public buildings in much of Europe during 2005 as an unlikely coalition of celebrities, church groups and trade unionists took part in the Make Poverty History campaign. The Group of Eight (G8) top industrialised countries and the European Union responded by promising to double their aid to Africa by 2010 at a summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.

Glenys Kinnock Credit:

Glenys Kinnock has been one of the most outspoken members of the European Parliament on development issues since she was first elected to the assembly in 1994. She spoke to IPS Brussels correspondent David Cronin.

IPS: Recently published data indicates that development aid is declining. Unless things dramatically improve, do you think the Millennium Development Goals are a lost cause? GK: No, I don't believe the MDGs are a lost cause. What we need to see now is that the member states of the European Union fulfil the promises they made at Gleneagles. What we have seen last year, of course, is that they inflated their aid levels by including debt relief to Iraq and Nigeria. This year they don't have the opportunity to do that so you've seen that there are some countries that are a major concern: Portugal, especially since they hosted the EU-Africa summit (in December); France had made a very strong commitment when (President Jacques) Chirac was there.

I think we need to name and shame those countries who are not fulfilling what was a strong commitment because we are talking about life and death here. The maternal mortality rates are in some countries getting worse.

These objectives are for 2015. What we would need to see is that by 2010 we would have 75 million more people out of extreme poverty and that would put us on track to meet the halving of poverty objective. What we need to have is a really concrete plan in place before the United Nations meets in September: on education, 25 million more children in school by 2010; four million more children's lives saved between now and 2010; on environment, 75 million more people to have access to water. Those are important benchmarks and timescales. And that's what we need.

I'm not pessimistic. The trends are not so bad that you would say you should despair.

IPS: How much does the current food crisis complicate matters? GK: Massively. (British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown has said that it is going to set back the MDGs agenda by as many as seven years. When you think about education and health, the needs are going to be much greater because people are not having enough food and there will be no money for education. So it will have huge implications, and governments will be put under enormous pressure to try and ensure there is food in their countries.

I was in the Seychelles recently doing some work on tuna fishing. And they are really very anxious about how they are going to manage. In the markets, they were saying that the fish, which is what everybody eats there, has doubled in price.

IPS: How much do you think the Western policy on biofuels is responsible for the food crisis? And do you think the EU should drop its target for increasing the proportion of biofuels used in transport? GK: I think it (the Western policy) is clearly a flawed policy. When you consider how many acres of land in the U.S. and across Europe will be going to producing crops for biofuels, it is just simply unacceptable. It is grotesque.

I think it was (World Bank President) Robert Zoellick who said: 'as we are thinking about what we are going to put in the tanks of our cars, other people are thinking about what they are going to put in their stomachs'.

IPS: You have been very critical of the Economic Partnership Agreements that the European Commission is negotiating with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) governments. Is there a fundamental incoherence between the EU's development policy with its stated commitment to reducing poverty, and the Union's trade policy? GK: The whole understanding of the ACP was that they would be negotiating tools for development. The sense has clearly been that that was not the outcome envisaged by the Commission.

When I was the rapporteur (drafter of the European Parliament's position) many years ago on the (EU's) trade and development agreement with South Africa, it was negotiated by officials in DG Development (the Commission's department for development). They grasped what the South Africans were talking about when they were discussing the relationship between trade and development.

With the EPAs, I think there has been a very technocratic approach which has not taken into account those things. I have been singled out (by the Commission) as someone who has misled and misinterpreted. But I would point to the fact that ministers, heads of state, parliaments and civil society across the ACP have voiced serious concerns.

IPS: You referred to the fact that negotiations with ACP countries on trade used to be led by development specialists, whereas now trade officials take the lead in them. Do you think that the Commission has moved backwards and that it is less eager to ensure that trade is compatible with development than it used to be? GK: I think that people who work in development are seen as impediments to a technocratic process of making trade deals. There are a number of bilateral deals that the Commission is negotiating all over the world.

With regards to the 78 ACP countries, they have the vast majority of the world's least developed countries, small island states, vulnerable states, landlocked countries. What we have seen is a contradiction between understanding the problems that they have and the need for economic development. I'm not against EPAs. I think we have no choice but to negotiate a new way of working.

But the pace of the negotiations has been extremely fast and pressured, which has led to the most acrimonious exchanges I have known in my whole relationship with the ACP.

IPS: The key objectives of EU trade policy such as reducing any barriers that European firms face in doing business abroad have been copied and pasted into the Lisbon treaty. Could this make the incoherence between trade and development worse? GK: That is clearly a possibility. But while that may be the trade set of objectives, in development we have to have our own set of objectives. Post-Lisbon it should be possible for us to strengthen the powers of a development commissioner.

There is far too much splintering of development work currently. For example, when we talk about election observation, the main responsibility is with Commissioner (Benita) Ferrero-Waldner (who holds the external relations portfolio) but most of the elections are taking place in (Development Commissioner) Louis Michel's ACP countries. I would be very much in favour of pulling together all the development work under one umbrella.

IPS: Speaking of elections, there is a photograph on your wall of you beside Morgan Tsvangirai (the Movement for Democratic Change leader in Zimbabwe). You have been calling for a very robust EU stance towards Robert Mugabe's regime. Is it Africa's responsibility to deal with the current situation in Zimbabwe or should Europe have any role in this? GK: There are discussions that we can have but it's absolutely right to say that this is the responsibility of Africa. There is still a case for mediation by a prominent African leader. It should not be (South African President) Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki should graciously step aside. Progress would be more likely to be made with (former Zambian President) Kenneth Kaunda or somebody like that.

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By Glenys Kinnock and - -
BRUSSELS, Mar 11 2008 (IPS)

Trade deal negotiations between the EU and African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries ended in a mess, writes Glenys Kinnock, Labour Party Member of the European Parliament. In this article, Kinnock writes that from the outset the European Commission negotiators approached the talks as if they were conventional free-trade area negotiations rather than tools for development. Now is the time for the EU to put development priorities back at the heart of the issue. There has to be a more participatory approach, more transparency, respect, and understanding for ACP regional and national interests. We urgently need a further opening of EU markets to ACP products, particularly agricultural products, which are the main exports for ACP countries. We must also ensure that the EC doesn\’t pressure ACP countries to liberalise services, investment, and government procurement, or to strengthen intellectual property rights or the inclusion of competition rules within EPAs. These EU-ACP trade agreements are absolutely critical to the future of the poorest countries in the world. We must ensure they are a genuine force for development.

It’s a fair description. But of course it wasn’t meant to be that way. When negotiations on Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) began in 2000 it was with the best of intentions – to agree WTO- compatible trading arrangements that would contribute to poverty alleviation, development, and regional economic integration.

Yet as the December 2007 deadline approached, those of us who had closely followed the negotiations despaired as we saw the process become increasingly mired in conflict and contention.

The fact is that from the outset the European Commission (EC) negotiators approached the talks on EPAs as if they were conventional free-trade area negotiations focused on market opening, rather than tools for development.

And so the agreements -except those regarding the Caribbean- were inevitably scaled back, with WTO-compatible interim deals, mainly on trade in goods, signed in haste. Of the 79 ACP countries that took part in the talks, fewer than a third agreed interim EPAs by the 31 December 2007 deadline.

Perhaps the biggest casualty of the whole process was regional integration. Though it has been reiterated time and time again that regionalism is a key component of a progressive development strategy, the Commission’s policy of concluding separate deals with individual states, or groups of countries, has possibly irreversibly splintered ACP regions.

In Central Africa for example, only Cameroon, because of its high volume of trade with the EU, has signed up to an interim EPA. Not surprisingly, this has resulted in friction between Cameroon and other governments in the regional grouping.

The Commissioner blames this clearly limited outcome on NGOs and even on the European Parliament members like myself. This, I believe, fails to recognise the disquiet and concern that has been most forcibly expressed by ACP governments, parliaments, and their private sectors, and by business people, farmers, trade unions, and civil society more generally.

Several countries agreed, at the eleventh hour, but only because they needed to maintain market access. This was particularly the case for non-Least Developed Countries, which do not qualify for the EU’s ‘Everything But Arms’ agreement for duty-free, quota-free market access, and which, as a result, were threatened with major tariff hikes and trade disruption if they failed to initial an interim deal.

Indeed an ACP Ministerial Declaration in December 2007 made this clear when it said they ”deplored the enormous pressure which they had been under and regretted the fact that the process had been contrary to the letter and spirit of the Cotonou Partnership Agreement.”

In response to ACP criticism at the EU-Africa Summit, European Commission President Barroso appeared to promote opportunities for adjustments to interim agreements. Yet the Commission now asserts that this is not, and never was, the case.

This confusion must be addressed, not least because the Central and West Africa agreement explicitly refers to the possibility of adjustment at regional level. Similarly, Namibia has annexed declarations providing for amendments.

In order to successfully fulfil its mandate to conclude EPAs with the ACP that are primarily tools for development, building on and strengthening the regional integration processes, the EU needs to work on a focused, development-friendly package.

We still do not have a clear picture of what has been concluded by each country, and how. But it certainly appears that EPAs will end up closely resembling the EC’s ambitious bilateral deals, with very few development concerns thrown in.

The International Food Policy Research Institute has estimated full implementation of EPAs in 2035 would see EU exports to the ACP increase by 29.4 billion euros while ACP exports could fall by 6.5 billion euros.

Let us be clear: economic restructuring to accommodate EPAs will be expensive and needs long-term resources to deal with capacity- building supply-side constraints, loss of fiscal revenue, and much else. The EU claims that recycled money for the 10th European Development Fund, covering the period 2008-13, and pledged at 22.7bn euros, will be enough to cover both ongoing development assistance plus additional EPA costs.

The Member States promised a further 1bn euros a year but I think we can fairly assume that since it has not yet been committed, it is unlikely to ever materialise.

ACP governments have put pressure on the EU to make binding commitments in the legal text of each EPA to provide the resources necessary. However, the EC argues that EPA negotiations are about trade, not development aid.

In the EU budget there is 55 billion euros a year to support the process of change, and yet ACP agricultural producers are meant to restructure their economies and cope with a liberalised trading environment in circumstances where – let’s face it – they are drought prone, flood prone, and still use donkeys and ploughs to farm their land.

Now is the time for the EU to build bridges and work to deliver a fair deal which puts development priorities back at the heart of the issue. There has to be a more participatory approach, more transparency, respect, and understanding for ACP regional and national interests.

We urgently need a further opening of EU markets to ACP products, particularly agricultural products, which are the main exports for ACP countries.

The need for reform on Rules of Origin must be addressed, as must EU subsidies that harm ACP producers – particularly on rice, sugar, poultry, cotton, fruit, and vegetables.

We must also ensure that there is no attempt made by the EC to pressure ACP countries to liberalise services, investment, and government procurement, or to strengthen intellectual property rights or the inclusion of competition rules within EPAs. ACP countries should not be obliged to negotiate binding commitments in these areas which are not required for WTO compliance.

These trade agreements between the EU and the ACP are absolutely critical to the future of the poorest countries in the world. We must ensure they are a genuine force for development. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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