EU and Papua New Guinea sign agreement
Swedish Presidency of the EU | 30 July 2009
EU and Papua New Guinea sign agreement
The EU and Papua New Guinea are today formally signing the Interim Economic Partnership Agreement.
Present at the ceremony in London are Director-General for Trade Anders Ahnlid, as representative of the Swedish EU Presidency, EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton and The Hon. Samuel Abal, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Trade and Immigration, Papua New Guinea.
“It is gratifying that the Interim Economic Partnership Agreement with Papua New Guinea is being signed today, as trade makes an important contribution to growth and development,” says Director-General Anders Ahnlid. “Duty-free quota-free access to the European market is now ensured.”
The EU is now signing the Agreement with Papua New Guinea. Fiji has decided to sign formally at a later stage.
Background
EU agreements on development assistance and trade benefits with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) States have historically been formalised unilaterally. The World Trade Organisation set 31 December 2007 as a deadline for the EU and the ACP States to enter into a trade agreement compatible with international trade regulations.
The EU and the ACP States are therefore negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA). The Pacific ACP Region is a regional negotiation group in these negotiations. To avoid a deterioration in the tariff situation after the end of 2007, the EU and the Pacific Group (Papua New Guinea and Fiji) agreed in November 2007 on an interim agreement covering trade in goods.
Other countries in the regional group decided not to be included in the interim agreement, either because the individual country was a Least Developed Country and already covered by the EU tariff system of duty-free quota-free imports to the EU or because the country’s trade with the EU was insignificant.
