Category: Post-Cotonou

EU Urged to Continue to Use High Tariffs to Protect EU Egg Sector

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Summary
A WUR report suggests the EU egg sector would face serious competitiveness challenges from imports without continued high levels of tariff protection. While this is justified on the basis of the high regulatory standards applied in the EU, even in the absence of higher EU regulatory standards major 3rd country egg exporters would still enjoy significant cost advantages. The contradiction between the EU’s continued use of a combination of high tariffs and quantitative restrictions on imports to regulate the EU egg market and the EU’s inclusion of provisions in trade agreements with ACP countries which seek to ban the use of quantitative restriction on imports from the EU needs to be recognised and addressed through continuing to flexibly interpret and enforce such commitments in trade with ACP countries. ACP governments need to be allowed to continue to use a range of trade policy tools in trade with the EU (including quantitative restrictions) where patterns of EU exports threaten national sector development strategies and aspirations. Read more “EU Urged to Continue to Use High Tariffs to Protect EU Egg Sector”

Calls for Stricter EU Measures Against UTPs

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Summary
EU regulations to combat unfair trading practices along agro-food supply chains, including within 3rd country supply chains serving the EU market continue to make progress through the legislative process. It is estimated EU farmers lose some €11 billion because ‘retail chains change contracts after they’ve been agreed upon or cancel orders at short notice’. ACP exporters also suffer from UTPs particularly last minute cancellations of orders and retroactive changes to agreed sales arrangements. The financial consequences of the UTPs can be quite severe, so operationalising the new UTP regulation as it applies to ACP-EU supply chain could lead to immediate improvements in the financial returns to ACP producers, particularly smallholder horticulture producers. This issue could potentially be taken up in the context of the forthcoming ACP-EU post-Cotonou negotiations. This can  be seen as an urgent issue since a ‘no-deal’ Brexit could disrupt triangular horticulture supply chains, with any resulting losses being passed down to primary producers in Africa and other ACP regions. Read more “Calls for Stricter EU Measures Against UTPs”

EU Sees Mauritania’s EPA signature as Stepping Stone to an EU-Africa FTA?

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Summary
The EU has sought to place Mauritania’s signature of the West African EPA in the context of the ‘new Africa-Europe alliance for sustainable investment and jobs’ initiative. The ultimate aim of this initiative is to secure a comprehensive EU-Africa FTA. The EC wants to see this include a revisiting of disciplines on domestic policy formulation which African governments consciously steered away from under the EPA negotiations. This needs to be seen in the context of the relative failure of the EC in securing FTAs with African countries. After 16 years of negotiations only 15 African governments have signed, ratified and are in the process of implementing EPAs, with this embracing only 24% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa. Against this background the EC appears to be looking to harness the ‘cart’ of its trade and investment ambitions in Africa to the ‘horse’ of the African Continental Free Trade Area. This could potentially complicate efforts to create a pan-African free trade area for agro-food products. In this context, in operationalising AfCFTA commitments, African governments will need to address the challenge of how to ensure the ‘tail’ of EPAs with the EU does not end up wagging the ‘dog’ of pan-African trade integration, simply by virtue of being first on the scene. Read more “EU Sees Mauritania’s EPA signature as Stepping Stone to an EU-Africa FTA?”

The June 2018 CAP Reform: Part 4 CAP and Policy Coherence for Development

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Summary
As part of the proposals for the revision of the EU’s common agricultural policy, the EC has released a substantive staff working paper which seeks to assess the impact of the European Commission proposals. Annex 5 of the EC Staff Working Paper which reviews the ‘Results of Quantitative and Multi-Criteria Analysis’ includes a section on ‘policy coherence’. This provides insights into the EC’s approach to addressing policy coherence for developments issues. It is noteworthy that policy coherence for development is only one dimension of the EU’s policy coherence agenda which need to be taken on board in the design and implementation of the CAP, and as such may not be accorded a high priority. While asserting the consistency of the CAP with EU development policy objectives the EU implicitly acknowledged the trade distorting nature of ‘coupled’ direct aid payments.  This suggests a need for specific measures to avoid any adverse effects on developing countries in sector where sugar and dairy sectors are important or sector development programmes are under implementation. This is likely to require a flexible and responsible interpretation and enforcement of EPA commitments on the use of non-tariff trade measures by ACP governments. A commitment in this regard should be enshrined in ‘Right to Development’ provisions under future EU partnership agreements with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. Read more “The June 2018 CAP Reform: Part 4 CAP and Policy Coherence for Development”

Questionable Increase in Future EU Development Financing

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Summary
An EC information note suggests the future multi-annual financial framework for EU external action programmes will see a 30% increase in the budget. However factoring in proposals to incorporate the EDF into the future multi-annual financial framework for EU external action programmes, suggests an almost 16% reduction in the real value of total EU external action programme expenditures in the coming period and even a small decline in planned expenditures in nominal terms. However it remains unclear where the burden of the reduced level of the EU’s planned expenditures in real terms will fall. Caribbean and Pacific ACP countries seem most likely to see a decline in grant financed development cooperation expenditures, while certain sub-Saharan African regions could see traditional development assistance activities down-sized as EU external action expenditures are more closely aligned with EU policy priorities along the West Africa-North Africa axis which plays a central role in migration flows. Read more “Questionable Increase in Future EU Development Financing”

EU Agri-food Export Growth Continues, Becoming Central to the Future EU Agricultural Prosperity

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Summary
EU agri-food exports continued to grow in 2017 (+5.1%), re-confirming the EU as the leading global agri-food trader, with a surplus of €21.5 billion. The EU also maintains a large trade surplus with LDCs (equivalent to 46% of the value of agri-food imports from LDCs). While the EC asserts that following the implementation of CAP reforms ‘EU exports of agri-food products to developing countries are simply a response to supply and demand’, the deployment EU agricultural support tools and trade policy measures continue to have an important bearing on the structure of EU production and patterns of exports to ACP countries, particularly in the dairy, poultry meat and increasingly the sugar sector. While the EU is committed to policy dialogues with ACP governments to strengthen the contribution of the agri-food sector to rural and wider national development, this dialogue will continue to be one-sided unless the EU acknowledges the impact which the deployment of EU policy tools continues to have on patterns of EU exports which can undermine prospects for the structural development of key agri-food sectors. In Africa in particular patterns of EU private sector investment are needed which support rather than hold back the integrated structural development of agri-food sectors so growing African demand for high quality, high value food can increasingly be met from domestic integrated agri-food sector activities. Read more “EU Agri-food Export Growth Continues, Becoming Central to the Future EU Agricultural Prosperity”

EU Moves to Restrict Poultry Imports from Brazil on SPS Grounds in Context of Challenges to Meat Sector Concessions in EU-Mercosur Negotiations

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Summary
The EC has de-listed 20 Brazilian meat and poultry processing plants, effectively halting imports into the EU from the affected meat company facilities. The Brazilian government has described the EC’s action as constituting ‘a trade war’ and see’s the EC’s action as a response to EU producer pressure to restrict the tariff rate quota for import of beef in the context of the EU-Mercosur negotiations. The Brazilian government is planning to appeal against the EC’s action in the WTO. The current developments in the Brazilian-EU meat sector trade highlight the importance of food safety and SPS issues in exporting to the EU. Given the challenges facing ACP exporters in consistently complying with evolving EU SPS and food safety standards it would appear enhanced structure for dialogue around these issues are required to ensure that in protecting plant, animal and human health in the EU, food safety and SPS controls are applied in a minimally trade disruptive manner. Read more “EU Moves to Restrict Poultry Imports from Brazil on SPS Grounds in Context of Challenges to Meat Sector Concessions in EU-Mercosur Negotiations”

March 2018 AU Position on Future Negotiations with EU Sparks Controversy

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Summary

The recently adopted African Union (AU) Executive Council decision to recommend the new agreement with the EU ‘should be separated from the ACP context’ is in contradictions to established common ACP positions, which in line with the recent CARIFORUM statement had emphasises the importance of building on the acquis by negotiating with the EU at the all-ACP level. By abandoning substantive negotiations at the pan-ACP level (the only level at which the EC is obliged to conclude an agreement by March 2020) the AU position risks weakening the position of regional negotiators on issues where there are tensions in the ACP-EU relationship. This includes a range of agro-food sector trade issue which in the context of evolving trends could come to take on growing significance fort African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, most notably in regard to the wider policy framework within which the EU seeks the implementation of EPA commitments.  This could carry particularly important implications for African structural economic transformation objectives in the agro-food sector. Read more “March 2018 AU Position on Future Negotiations with EU Sparks Controversy”

European Civil Society Organisations call for EC Action on UTPs Along All Agricultural Supply Chains

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Summary

In a letter to EC President Juncker European civil society bodies have come out publicly in favour of extending proposed EU regulations on UTPs to supply chains including those sourcing from beyond the EU’s borders. The ACP Group and individual ACP governments with an interest in those supply chains which are most seriously affected could usefully support this initiative, so as to have an EU regulatory framework in place which can be developed in the context of the post-Cotonou negotiations to operationalise the application of these principles along ACP-EU supply chains – from farm to fork. Read more “European Civil Society Organisations call for EC Action on UTPs Along All Agricultural Supply Chains”

Brexit Implications for ACP EU Post Cotonou Negotiation in the Agro-food Sector

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The 22 February 2018 ACT Alliance convened a seminar on the Implications of Brexit in the agro-food sector for ACP countries, included an afternoon session on the implications of Brexit for the forthcoming ACP-EU Post-Cotonou negotiations and the possible ramifications for ACP agro-food sectors. This note summarises the main points made in the initial presentation during this session. It is not an exploration of all the issues arising in the context of these forthcoming negotiations but rather provides an introduction to some of the most salient aspects of the impact of the Brexit process on the post-Cotonou negotiations as this impinges on the agro-food sector relationship. It looked at these salient aspects with reference to 3 specific dimensions: trade relations, development cooperation and political relations and seeks to selectively review the implications for different ACP regions. Read more “Brexit Implications for ACP EU Post Cotonou Negotiation in the Agro-food Sector”