EPAs: Are they for Economic Development or Degradation?

In recent years there has been a heated debate over Economic Partnership Agreements (often shortened to EPAs). The trade deals being negotiated between the European Union (EU) and 76 poor countries – mostly former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific (known as the ACP) are orchestrated by EU as “extremely important” as they will lay the rules of trade between Europe and these countries for decades to come and have positive impacts to the lives of millions of people.


These trade deals, however, have remained highly controversial since their inception in 2002. They were meant to be concluded on December 31, 2007. But until today they are yet to be concluded.

While the EU have dabbled the deals “the most developmental” and therefore necessary for ACP countries, some development analysts and economic justice groups have criticized the agreements as a new scrambling and partition of Africa.

Former TZ Pres

One of the main critics of EPAs is the former President of Tanzania Benjamin Mkapa. Quoted by the AFRONLINE website, Mkapa once said EPAs deals are ‘another Berlin Conference for the scramble of Africa’. He remarked “If you fool me once, shame is on you, fool me twice shame is on me.”


He said Africans were taken for a ride during the Berlin Conference and that should serve as an important lesson to them when they negotiate trading partnerships with Europe.


South Centre, the Geneva based organization that analyses development problems and experience, as well as to provide intellectual and policy support required by developing countries for collective and individual action, particularly in the international arena, says that EPAs discourage African countries from having appropriate trade policies to support increasing production capacities in agriculture and industries.


It estimates that Africa will lose nearly US$2 billion (Sh2.6 trillion) under the EPA arrangement through a decline in exports, export tariff cuts, undermining of agriculture and deindustrialization, among other factors.


“Relinquishing the ability to craft appropriate trade policies will lock African countries into their current patterns of production such as low levels of manufacturing capacity and ‘mono-exportation’,” says South Centre report.


In its report entitled “EPA Contentious Issues Matrix: State Of Play, Key Problems And Recommendations” South Centre has a long list of 21 contentious issues that need to be taken care for EPAs to materialize. The issues include prohibition of any increase in applied tariffs for products subject to liberalization, lack of review clause of EPAs in Africa, clause that require countries to liberalise 80% of their tariff lines (or imports from EU), impact that the deals have on the existing regional integration and they lack agreement on the rules of origin.

Oxfam Office

Another EPAs critic organization is the Oxfam. The organization says in its website that “if the new trade agreements are skewed in favor of Europe’s rich countries, then they are more likely to increase rather than reduce poverty.” It says this will even be more pronounced because “Europe is pushing for new trade rules which would open up African, Caribbean and Pacific countries to competition from technologically advanced European industries and heavily subsidized European farmers.”


Another poverty lobby group, ActionAid “believes that poor people are threatened by proposed new trade deals called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs)”.
According to ActionAid, EPAs are skewed in favour of rich countries and threaten to leave 750 million poor people worse off than ever. The organization is concerned that unless EPAs are radically reformed, African, Caribbean and Pacific countries will face job losses, government revenue losses and cuts in public services as developing countries are forced to open up their markets to the EU before they are ready.