EPAs
The EU concluded the first round of negotiations to deepen the existing Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with five Eastern and Southern Africa partners.
Seychelles is for the first time hosting negotiations between the European Union and the Eastern Southern African States that are focusing on the implementation of an interim economic partnership.
The objectives of the agreement are to improve Seychelles’ capacity to manage and implement the current EPA.
African political and business leaders complained that trade deals are skewed in favour of Europe, preventing them from building up domestic processing industries.
In this interview, we discuss the PACER+ trade deal, the post Cotonou talks with the EU and the influence of China’s Belt and Road Initiative in the Pacific region.
The African Union Commission’s high representative on Cotonou has warned that keeping the ACP framework will make it harder for the EU to agree on a ‘continent-to-continent instrument’.
France is the first of four main suppliers for products imported to Cameroon under the economic partnership agreement with the European Union.
The Trade Ministers from the SACU Member States, Mozambique and the United Kingdom signed the economic partnership agreement.
EU official welcomed Solomon Islands’ interest in joining the existing Economic Partnership Agreement.
The new agreement will hopefully cover ‘trade-related areas, such as services, investment, technical barriers to trade, intellectual property rights as well as trade and sustainable development,’ says EU Commission.
Negotiators from the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries met at the United Nations to determine the future of the ACP-EU partnership.
The President signed the act ratifying the Economic Partnership Agreement between West African States, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the European Union and its members.
Two months to the East African Community’s Summit, partner states are keeping the European Union guessing over the controversial Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) whose signing stalled in 2016.
The UK has initiated an economic partnership agreement with the Southern African Customs Union and Mozambique (Sacu+M) that will allow business to keep trading freely after Brexit.
The EAC negotiated and concluded a bilateral trade agreement with the EU as a bloc, and it must remain as such, say sources at the European Commission.
Progress has been painfully slow on a pact between the EU and the 79 countries in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) community, and few officials now believe the successor deal will be concluded in time to come into force in January 2020.
Despite the failures of the EPA to deliver real development to Pacific countries it looks as though the European Union will once again, through the Post Cotonou Agreement, push for enhanced and undistorted access for European investments to Pacific resources.
The validation of a report on the trade impact of the bilateral Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Cameroon and the United Kingdom is the first step before the actual start of negotiations.
Quite a few Senegalese people are fed up with the recolonization of their country by French capitalism. They have gathered among several citizen groups to resist it.
African dairy farmers protested outside the European Union HQ to demand that they don’t over-produce milk and then flood African markets.
