Download or read book Beyond Market Access for Economic Development written by Gerrit Faber and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-06-17 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Economic Partnership Agreements between the European Union and the Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries have drastically restructured Europe’s trade architecture towards the third world. This volume examines the consequences of EPAs for development in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Starting from the observation that the establishment of free trade as such will substantially impact upon economic development, the different contributions focus on the potential contribution of non-traditional aspects of EPAs. More specifically, the authors analyze the role of Aid for Trade schemes, regulatory integration issues and broader foreign policy considerations. How can these non-market access aspects stimulate development in Africa, and how have they been addressed in the EPAs? In short, this brings us to the question whether the ‘light version EPAs’ as they currently stand are a missed chance or a blessing in disguise?
Download or read book The European Union Economic Partnership Agreements with Sub Saharan Africa written by Alice N. Sindzingre and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyses the impacts of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) countries and those of the EU (European Union) in the specific case of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In order to comply with WTO (World Trade Organisation) requirements, the EPAs shift the trade preferences previously enjoyed by the ACP countries to a free trade regime between the EU and regional groupings of ACP countries. EPAs were supposed to fully enter into force at the end of 2007, but many ACP SSA countries have not been ready or have been reluctant to implement them at that date. EPAs are examined in their different contexts, in particular the theoretical underpinnings of trade liberalisation and regionalism respectively, as well as the increasing number of regional arrangements aiming at 'deep' regional integration in all parts of the world, which ensued from the disappointment with multilateralism of many developed and developing countries. EPAs are then investigated in the specific context of SSA, i.e. that of a distorted trade structure, an excessive dependence on commodity exports, fragile industrial bases, as well as by a disputed effectiveness of its many intra-SSA regional agreements. EPAs co-exist with other North-South preferential trade agreements, in particular the EU GSP (Generalised System of Preferences), including the EBA (Everything But Arms) initiative, and the US AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act). It is shown that EPAs will have very different outcomes depending on countries and their particular initial conditions, economic structures and regional context. It is also revealed that these outcomes depend on many variables: global factors, international prices, domestic market structures, trade policies conducted by the EU, the governments and various trade agreements to which they belong. EPA outcomes are therefore uncertain and can be assessed only on a case by case basis, at the level of countries, sectors and products. In addition, many impact assessments rely on simulations, which cannot be considered as 'hard facts'. EPAs may have beneficial effects on SSA countries and enhance their exports and competiveness. They may constitute a mode of integration that is more efficient than multilateral liberalisation, and in fine may be a more manageable step towards multilateralisation, especially in poor countries. However, EPAs exhibit several risks, e.g. diverting trade, augmenting the complexity of the already complex 'spaghetti bowl' of trade arrangements, creating fiscal losses in countries that suffer from narrow fiscal bases and rely on trade taxes, eroding the existing industrial bases - which are fragile, threatened by more competitive developing countries, especially China, and often depend on the previous EU unilateral preferences - and benefiting EU firms more than those of SSA. EPAs have the ambition to foster trade, improve regional relationships, deepen north-south integration and enhance development. These are numerous objectives, and moreover countries may strongly differ: they can be reached if EPAs help countries to reinforce their capacity to conduct their policies - the 'policy space' - control the effects of trade diversion and displacements of industrial activities that often accompany free trade agreements, and strengthen their industrial sectors, as high-growth Asian countries.
Download or read book Perceptions of the EU in Eastern Europe and Sub Saharan Africa written by V. Bachmann and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection examines how the EU is seen in the two regions that are at the centre of its geopolitical interest. Focusing on Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, it provides a critical assessment of how their external perceptions relate to EU policy towards them.
Download or read book Economic Partnership Agreements and the Export Competitiveness of Africa written by Paul Brenton and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2008 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Trade can be a key driver of growth for African countries, as it has been for those countries, particularly in East Asia, that have experienced high and sustained rates of growth. Economic partnership agreements with the European Union could be instrumental in a competitiveness framework, but to do so they would have to be designed carefully in a way that supports integration into the global economy and is consistent with national development strategies. Interim agreements have focused on reciprocal tariff removal and less restrictive rules of origin. To be fully effective, economic partnership agreements will have to address constraints to regional integration, including both tariff and non-tariff barriers; improve trade facilitation; and define appropriate most favored nation services liberalization. At the same time, African countries will need to reduce external tariff peak barriers on a most favored nation basis to ensure that when preferences for the European Union are implemented after transitional periods, they do not lead to substantial losses from trade diversion. This entails an ambitious agenda of policy reform that must be backed up by development assistance in the form of "aid for trade."
Download or read book EU Economic Partnership Agreements in Sub Saharan Africa Avenues of Compromise for a Constructive Outcome by September 2014 written by Evita Schmieg and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: For more than ten years the European Union has been negotiating economic partnership agreements (EPAs) with regional groupings in Africa. These free trade agreements are dedicated first and foremost to the goal of sustainable development. While African governments are wary of the consequences of market opening and sceptical of restrictions of their policy space, they are also interested in gaining access to the EU market. The European Union's decision to restrict free market access as of 1 October 2014 to countries and regions that exhibit a clear intention to ratify such agreements has injected pressure and momentum into the talks. The negotiations can be concluded constructively if both sides accept necessary compromises. That demands movement, not least at the very top. (author's abstract)
Download or read book The European Union in Africa written by Maurizio Carbone and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Union in Africa: Incoherent policies, asymmetrical partnership, declining relevance? provides a comprehensive analysis of EU-Africa relations since the beginning of the twenty-first century and includes contributions from leading experts in the field of EU external relations. It seeks to explain how the relationship evolved through discussion of a number of different policies and agreements, ranging from established areas such as aid, agriculture, trade and security, to new areas such as migration, climate change, energy and social policies. This book successfully challenges a number of widely-held assumptions on the role of the EU in Africa, and at the same time sheds light on the role and identity of the EU in the international arena. It will be of great interest to students and scholars in the field of EU external relations as well as practitioners of international development.
Download or read book Regionalism and Integration in Africa written by Samuel O. Oloruntoba and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The resurgence of regionalism is borne out of the current political logjams that have characterized the governance and operations of multilateral trading system over the past one decade and a half. Oloruntoba critically examines Euro-Nigeria relations within the context of the Economic Partnership Agreements in terms of the political and economic implications of the agreements on Nigeria’s non-oil exports sub-sectors. Set within one of the main objectives of the Economic Partnership Agreements, he also interrogates the prospects and challenges of regional integration in Africa under the regime of transnational accumulation, which the Economic Partnership Agreements represents.
Download or read book The European Union West Africa Economic Partnership Agreement written by Bouët, Antoine and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite recent modifications, the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union (EU) and West African (WA) countries is still being criticized for its potential detrimental effects on WA countries. This paper provides updated evidence on the impact of the EPA on these countries. A dynamic multicountry, multisector computable general equilibrium trade model with modeling of the dual-dual economy and with a consistent tariff aggregator is used to simulate a series of new scenarios that include updated information on the agreement. We also go beyond estimating macrolevel economic effects to analyze the impacts on poverty. The policy simulation results show that the implementation of the EPA between the EU and WA countries would have marginal but positive impacts on Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire and negative impacts on Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Togo. The impact on poverty indicators in Ghana and Nigeria would be marginal. From the perspective of WA countries, this study supports the view that recent EU concessions are not sufficient and that domestic fiscal reforms are needed in WA countries themselves.
Download or read book Did you say free trade written by Jacques Berthelot and published by Editions L'Harmattan. This book was released on 2018-09-21 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The headlong rush of the European Union (EU) in Free Trade Agreements reaches the paroxysm of absurdity when it imposes them on West Africa, whose per capita GDP is 21 times lower than its own. This Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) would make West Africa lose 76% of its customs revenue on its imports from the EU and lead to a sharp rise in unemployment due to the loss of competitiveness of its companies including the informal sectors.The latter will be worsened by the premature signing, with support from the EU, of the Continental Free Trade Area by 13 of 16 West African States, all this based on a number of untruths from the European Commission, as identified in this book.
Download or read book Sub Saharan Africa written by Mr.Sanjeev Gupta and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2007-10-16 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the impact on trade in sub-Saharan Africa of the recent rapid growth in China and other Asian countries, and the associated commodity price boom? This paper looks at how trading patterns (both destinations and composition) are changing in sub-Saharan Africa. Has the region managed to diversify the products it sells from commodities to manufactured goods? Has it expanded the range of countries to which it exports? And what about the import side? The time is ripe for sub-Saharan African countries to climb up the value chain of their commodity-based exports and/or achieve an export surge based on labor-intensive manufacturing.
Download or read book The European Union s Africa Policies written by Daniela Sicurelli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Union (EU) is a key partner for African regional organizations and a major promoter of economic and political integration in the region. Several studies have interpreted the EU's role in Africa as either a self-interested hegemonic actor or as a value oriented normative power. In this volume, Daniela Sicurelli challenges these views by taking a closer look at Europe's policies towards Sub-Saharan Africa in the area of peacekeeping, trade and development, and environmental protection. Using fresh empirical evidence, including interviews with both European and African officials, she argues that the EU is far from becoming a unitary player in Africa. Lacking a clear strategy and coherent normative framework, the EU should be considered a multi-level actor, where national and supranational institutions have different interests and push forward contrasting views of what role Europe should play in Africa. The ability of single institutions to frame an issue as requiring either intergovernmental or supranational procedures appears crucial for shaping the content of European Africa policies. An original contribution to the growing literature on the EU as an international actor, this book is extremely useful to scholars, researchers and policy-makers demanding critical work in the field of EU-Africa policy.
Download or read book Economic Partnership Agreements Between Sub Saharan Africa and the EU written by Lawrence E. Hinkle and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper draws on Hinkle and Schiff (2003). It analyses the planned Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the EU and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from a development perspective. It does not take a position on whether SSA should enter into EPAs with the EU. Rather, it starts from the notion that the process of forming EPAs is unlikely to be reversed and examines the conditions that will maximise SSA's benefits from the EPAs. If this notion is correct, then the analysis presented in the paper applies. On the other hand, Pascal Lamy, the EU Trade Commissioner, made a proposal at the May 2004 G-90 summit in Dakar that might lead to a change in the EPA process. He proposed that the G-90, a group consisting of ACP and non-ACP LDC countries, should not have to make concessions at the WTO Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations, i.e., he proposed a 'free round' for the G-90. This proposal opens the door to the possibility that the same might apply to the ACP countries in the EU-ACP negotiations and that the EPA process might be reversed. The paper considers the key issues raised by the planned EPAs, their relationship to the WTO's Doha Round and the EU's Everything-but-Arms Initiative, the changes needed to make the EPAs internally consistent, the domestic reforms in SSA that would need to accompany trade liberalisation in both goods and services, and the potential effects of the EPAs on regional integration in SSA. The EPAs will pose a number of policy challenges for SSA countries, including: restructuring of indirect tax systems, reduction of MFN tariffs, liberalisation of service imports on an MFN basis and related regulatory reforms in the services sector, and liberalisation of trade in both goods and services within the regional trading blocs in SSA. The paper also finds that the EPAs provide an opportunity to accelerate regional and global trade integration in SSA. To realise the potential development benefits of the planned EPAs, two steps are essential. First, the EU must, as it has stated, truly treat the EPAs as instruments of development, subordinating its commercial interests in the agreements to the development needs of SSA. Second, the SSA countries need to implement a number of EPA-related trade policy reforms. However, the latter is far from certain, given the lack of reform momentum in SSA.
Download or read book North South Regional Trade Agreements as Legal Regimes written by Clair Gammage and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-26 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a critical reflection of the North-South regional trade agreements (RTAs), known as the Economic Partnership Agreements, negotiated between the EU and the African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries. Conceiving of regions as legal regimes, Clair Gammage highlights the challenges facing developing countries when negotiating RTAs with developed countries and interrogates the assumption that these agreements will and can promote sustainable development through trade.
Download or read book Negotiating Regions written by Helmut Asche and published by Leipziger Universitätsverlag. This book was released on 2008 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The European Union s Trade Relations written by Alex Cyril Ekeke and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study investigates the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), between the European Union (EU) and sub-Saharan African countries and how it affects the realisation of the right to development (RTD) in sub-Saharan Africa as well as whether the EU has an extraterritorial human rights obligation to respect RTD in sub-Saharan Africa. It further examines the concept and various meaning of development and looks at the historical view, nature and content of the RTD, the legal basis for the RTD globally and under the African human rights system as well as its implementation and monitoring mechanism. In this study the meaning of extraterritorial human rights obligations is examined, in terms of principle 8 of the Maastricht Principles on Extra-territorial Obligations of States in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It includes first, 'Obligations relating to the acts and omissions of a State, within or beyond its territory, that have effects on the enjoyment of human rights outside of that State℗þs territory℗þ and secondly, 'obligations of a global character that are set out in the Charter of the United Nations and human rights instruments to take action, separately, and jointly through international cooperation, to realise human rights universally.℗þ This study finds that, at the global level, the RTD is commonly recognized by the international community but not really legally binding. However, under the African human rights system, the RTD is guaranteed under Article 22 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (the African Charter) and is binding on the African States which are signatories to the African Charter. Furthermore, the present EPAs and the negotiating process have a negative impact on the realisation of RTD in sub-Saharan Africa. The EU has extra-territorial human rights obligation under the TEU, TFEU and the EU Charter. Although the EU is not a signatory to the Declaration on the right to development neither is she a signatory to the two Conventions but has respected the rights protected under the two Conventions extra-territorially. Therefore, the EU can leverage its extra-territorial human rights obligation under the TEU to respect and promote the realisation of the RTD in Africa through its trade relations.
Download or read book Using Trade to Promote Development in Countries in Sub Saharan Africa the Caribbean the Pacific written by European Commission. Directorate-General for Trade and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 6 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The EU and countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) have agreed, or are negotiating, economic partnership agreements (EPAs). EPAs are new partnerships designed to promote development through trade.
Download or read book EU ACP Economic Partnership Agreements written by Sebastian Vollmer and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since early 2008 there have been interim trade agreements between the EU and six regions of ACP countries in force which could be stepping stones towards full Economic Partnership Agreements between the EU and all ACP countries. This paper estimates the welfare effects of the interim agreements for nine African countries: Botswana, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, and Uganda. Results indicate that Botswana, Cameroon, Mozambique, and Namibia will significantly profit from the interim agreements, while the trade effects for Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda are close to zero. Predicted results of the liberalization based on the interim agreement's reduction rates fall short of the potential of a full liberalization.
