Abstract
This chapter begins by setting out the background to international trade relations between the European Commission and developing countries before turning to look at Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) themselves in more detail and the effects that have been predicted on the developing countries if EPAs were to be introduced in the way envisaged. The chapter then comments briefly on a “Stop EPAs” campaign that has been run by NGOs for a number of years, before presenting and commenting on the current position showing which EPAs have been signed. The literature on fairness in international trade is then reviewed and, to some extent, extended and applied to the case of EPAs. Conclusions which, as might be predicted, are somewhat tentative, but do raise some new issues are then drawn.
Any attempt to define fairness in global trade relations should teach humility. Brown & Stern (2007: 316)
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Notes
- 1.
Such preferential treatment is allowable under what is known as the “Enabling Clause”, but is officially the “Decision on differential and more favourable treatment, reciprocity and fuller participation of developing countries” that was adopted by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1979. The Enabling Clause provides the legal basis for the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) GSP by which developed countries offer non-reciprocal preferential treatment (e.g. zero or low duties on imports) to products which originate in developing countries. Preference-giving countries can unilaterally decide which countries and which products to include. See http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/devel_e/dev_special_differential_provisions_e.htm, accessed 12/12/08.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
See, http://www.dfid.gov.uk/aboutdfid/organisation/economic-partnership-agreements.asp, accessed 12/12/08.
- 5.
See http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dda_e/dda_e.htm, accessed 12/12/08.
- 6.
See http://www.un.org/special-rep/ohrlls/ldc/list.htm, accessed 12/12/08.
- 7.
See, for example, http://www.dfid.gov.uk/aboutdfid/organisation/economic-partnership-agreements.asp, accessed 12/12/08.
- 8.
See http://ec.europa.eu/trade/issues/global/gsp/eba/index_en.htm, accessed 12/12/08.
- 9.
See http://www.dfid.gov.uk/aboutdfid/organisation/economic-partnership-agreements-myths.asp, accessed 12/12/08.
- 10.
See http://www.dfid.gov.uk/aboutdfid/organisation/economic-partnership-agreements.asp, accessed 12/12/08.
- 11.
Countries included in the analysis differ very slightly from those in Appendix 1.
- 12.
See http://www.dfid.gov.uk/aboutdfid/organisation/economic-partnership-agreements-myths.asp, accessed 12/12/08.
- 13.
See http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/r13002.htm, accessed 12/12/08.
- 14.
See http://www.dfid.gov.uk/aboutdfid/organisation/economic-partnership-agreements-myths.asp, accessed 12/12/08.
- 15.
See http://www.tjm.org.uk, accessed 12/12/08.
- 16.
The seven are: West Africa (Ghana, Ivory Coast); Central African Economic and Monetary Community (Cameroon); East African Community (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda); East and Southern Africa (Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and Zimbabwe); Southern African Development Community (Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia and Swaziland); Caribbean (all countries – see Appendix 1); Pacific (Fiji and Papua New Guinea), http://www.dfid.gov.uk/aboutdfid/organisation/epas-progress-update.asp, accessed 12/12/08.
- 17.
See http://www.dfid.gov.uk/aboutdfid/organisation/epas-progress-update.asp, accessed 12/12/08. An alternative web-site for regular up-dates can be found at http://www.acp-eu-trade.org. See also http://ec.europa.eu/trade/issues/bilateral/regions/acp/regneg_en.htm.
- 18.
Suranovic (2000) divides these seven into two categories: equality fairness and reciprocity fairness. I will cover six of the seven here, the seventh being privacy fairness – “an agent should be free to take any action which has effects only on himself” (ibid.: 301)
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Moore, G. (2010). Fairness in International Trade: The Case of Economic Partnership Agreements. In: Moore, G. (eds) Fairness in International Trade. The International Society of Business, Economics, and Ethics Book Series, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8840-6_10
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