MPs want region to turn away from EU
The East African (Nairobi)
MPs Want Region to Turn Away From EU
12 October 2008
By Francis Ayieko, Nairobi
East Africa’s increasingly frosty economic ties with the West took a turn for the worse last week when the region’s parliamentarians called for their governments to scrap the interim Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union.
Members of the national parliaments of the five-member East African Community and their counterparts of the East African Legislative Assembly, want the EAC to develop "a strategic development co-operation strategy" with other African regional economic communities as well as with emerging global economies of China, India and Brazil.
The legislators’ call for a radical shift in EAC’s approach to global economic and development co-operation has apparently stemmed from their perception that the West "arm-twisted" the region into signing an interim Economic Partnership Agreements framework with the European Union in November last year following the expiry last December of the Cotonou pact governing trade between the European Union and the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.
Dr Francis Mangeni, a consultant on African trade and international trade policy, says that EPAs are part of the EU global strategy that is not sensitive to the need to balance the interests of weak partners with Europe’s immediate and long-term interests.
Speaking during the 4th Annual Inter-Parliamentary Relations Seminar in Kigali, Rwanda on October 1-3, the parliamentarians declared that the EPA Framework Agreement that was initialled between the EAC and EU last November was a raw deal and poorly negotiated.
They are now demanding that they be involved in EPA and EAC Common Market negotiations. At the seminar, the parliamentarians resolved that the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) and the national parliaments engage EPA negotiators — ministers and technocrats — to register their concerns before the final signing of the Comprehensive EPA Agreement.
Their concerns included the issues of a development chapter, flexibility and exceptions in market access, periodic reviews, specific reviews, dispute settlements, a proper approach to the Singapore issues and relevant institutions.
They want their engagement with the EPA negotiators to take place before June 2009.
According to the parliamentarians, the "rapid developments" in East Africa calls for more South-South co-operation, which they consider to be more advantageous than that with the West.
To enhance the region’s negotiating capacity with the rest of the world, they recommended that all EAC partner states assent to the East African Joint Trade Negotiation Bill recently passed by EALA.
Of the five EAC partner states — Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi — only Kenya has yet to assent to the Bill.
According to Dr Mangeni, as the EAC countries were engaged with the EU on the EPA negotiations and initialling a Framework EPA Agreement, they didn’t remember that EU had a global market access strategy and the EAC countries had neither a strategy for Europe nor, for that matter, a market access strategy for any other part of the world.
Addressing the Kigali seminar, Dr Mangeni said: "Under the ongoing negotiation of EPAs, the EU negotiators remained tough and stubborn, almost replicas of the colonial viceroy.
The EU is trying to again mould the developing world in its own image, and to negotiate itself into a permanent preferential place that assures its continued influence in order to secure an edge over competitors for resources, services and goods," Dr Mangeni said.
He said the EPA agenda and its contents were being imposed against mounting opposition by various stakeholders, including the African Union, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, developing countries parliamentarians, non-governmental organisations and other concerned groups which were being ignored.
He said the bureaucrats have stolen the show, sidelined everybody and are negotiating the EPAs without involvement or guidance of the parliaments with regard to the negotiation positions.
The seminar, officially opened by Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, brought together over 200 participants who included all the 45 EALA members; 15 Members of Parliament from each of the five EAC National Assemblies; East African ministers, senior government and EAC officials and 15 members of the Economic Community of Western African States parliament.
The seminar focused on enhancing the roles of the national and regional legislators in the EAC integration process, devoting their discussions to the ongoing negotiations on the EAC Common Market Protocol and the EC-EAC Economic Partnership Agreement.
According to EALA speaker Abdirahin Haithar Abdi, the inter-parliamentary seminars provided a platform for collaborative effort between EALA and the national assemblies of the partner states to address the challenges of regional integration and mobilise public opinion on critical regional issues.
Mr Abdi said parliaments should be constantly appraised of the progress and developments on the ongoing negotiations of the EAC Common Market Protocol and the EPA negotiations — right from the initial and subsequent implementation stages of the negotiations.
