'We will all live to regret it' Professor Girvan warns that EPA could widen inequalities among CARICOM States

Guyana Chronicle news item, Monday 31 March 2008

http://www.guyanachronicle.com/news.html

'We will all live to regret it'
. . . Professor Girvan warns that EPA could widen inequalities among CARICOM
States
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Professor Norman Girvan

JAMAICA OBSERVER - Leading Caribbean scholar of the political economy,
Professor Norman Girvan, has said the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA)
between the CARIFORUM group and the European Commission could create wide
inequalities among CARICOM member states and fragment the Community.
Addressing the closing session of the ninth annual Sir Arthur Lewis
Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) conference at the
University of the West Indies, Mona, Friday evening, Girvan called the EPA
"an agreement we will all live to regret at a time not too far into the
future".
The EPA, which was brokered last December, gives Caribbean countries duty
and quota free access in goods (with the temporary exception of rice and
sugar) and services to EU, and is supposed to be the replacement for
preferential trade agreements.
Girvan's warning came as Antony Hylton, Jamaica's former minister of Foreign
Affairs and Foreign Trade, argued in an essay published on Page 13 of the
Sunday Observer that the Jamaican Opposition and Government should work
together on getting an amendment to the EPA, particularly the Most Favoured
Nation (MFN) Clause.
"Our concern about the scope of the agreement to cover areas not yet settled
in the CARICOM arrangements, for example, government procurement, are for
very much the same reason, that is, lack of resources to adequately meet the
challenges inherent in these far-reaching obligations," said Hylton.
"However, our greatest concern then and now is the severe limitation on
policy option by future governments implied by the 11th-hour acceptance of
the MFN Clause, proposed by Europe, and recommended for acceptance by Prime
Minister Golding to the rest of CARIFORUM governments in the dying moments
of the negotiations. The MFN Clause obliges Jamaica and its CARIFORUM
partners to give to Europe any more favourable treatment/benefit it gives to
a third party with which it enters into a subsequent agreement," added
Hylton.
Girvan, who was being honoured at the conference, said there was room for
possible conflict between the provisions of the EPA and those of the treaty
that formed CARICOM.
"The jury is still out on what happens if there is a conflict between the
provisions of governance for the EPA -- which entrenches a joint council of
the European Commission and the CARIFORUM states, and gives that council the
power to make legally binding decisions on the parties, who are obliged to
carry them out on pain of being submitted to the disputes settlement
provisions.
"And the jury is still out on what would happen if there is a conflict
between the organs of governance and the provisions of the Treaty of
Chagaramus and the EPA," Girvan said.
He said, too, that the wording of the EPA does not make clear when CARIFORUM
states can or should act individually or collectively.
"It states that the parties to this agreement are the European Commission
representing EU member states on the one hand, and CARIFORUM states acting
collectively on the other hand, but it also goes on to say, 'for the purpose
of this agreement the CARIFORUM states act collectively', but that where the
provisions of the agreement require the individual CARIFORUM states to
exercise their rights or to undertake obligations, the reference in the
document is to signatory CARIFORUM states," Girvan said.
He said the Caribbean had come to a metaphorical fork in the road. One path
(the CSME) led to greater regional integration "with the purpose of
exercising greater autonomy", and the other path (the EPA) led to "loss of
autonomy to shape our own future".
Girvan said greater regionalism should have existed before any sort of
agreement with the Europeans. Whether the Caribbean would actually ever be
in a position to change its fortunes, Girvan said, was left to regional
governments and time. He said part of the solution also lay in a
"reassertion of the intellectual space" and more critical, individual
thought, particularly among the young.
"In the words of [Marcus] Garvey, 'I want our people to think for
themselves'," Girvan said. In the words of [Lloyd] Best, 'We are at the
centre of our world'.
"In those of [George] Beckford, 'We have the resources in this region and we
have the ingenuity among our people to make of this region a veritable
paradise on this earth.'"