SAfrica won’t ’roll over’ on services trade with EU
Reuters | Sat 13 Oct 2007
SAfrica won’t ’roll over’ on services trade with EU
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) — The European Union (EU) needs to scale down its ambitions for accessing the service sector in southern Africa as it negotiates an economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the region, said South Africa’s deputy trade minister Rob Davies.
In an interview with the Inter Press Service, published on the South African Press Association (SAPA) website on Saturday, Davies said South Africa was not prepared to "roll over" and accept an agreement that would not meet the region’s development targets.
Davies said the EU’s inclusion of the so-called Singapore issues was the greatest obstacle in the way of concluding the EPA negotiations before the deadline of Dec 31.
Even if the EU decides to push these issues further, South Africa is not prepared to "roll over" and accept an agreement that will not meet the development targets of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), Davies said.
His remarks come after EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson said South Africa was playing a "deeply negative" role in the EPA negotiations and "was preventing others much less well off than them in the region from moving forward", Sapa reported.
The EU wants trade liberalisation to be extended to services in the financial transport and telecommunications sector. It is pressing for African governments to give the same treatment to European companies as it gives to local companies.
Davies told IPS that the SADC wanted to develop services sectors so they can compete with highly resourced European companies on an equal footing, before opening the sectors up.
Failure to conclude the EPA trade in goods negotiations could see the least developed countries (Mozambique, Angola and Tanzania) falling under the preferential `Everything-But-Arms’ trade scheme.
But for non-LDCs such as Botswana, Namibia and Swaziland their trade preferences could dwindle down to the level of the generalised system of preferences applicable to all developing countries.
