Defer signing of EPAs - Jubilee Zambia

Defer signing of EPAs - Jubilee Zambia
By Kabanda Chulu
Thursday November 01, 2007 [03:00]

JUBILEE Zambia Monze chapter has called for the postponement of the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) scheduled for December 2007 in order to allow for full consultations among the people. And former commerce minister Dipak Patel has challenged the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries including Zambia to question the merits and demerits of the EPA.

During a stakeholders meeting on economic literacy held in Monze yesterday, Jubilee Zambia observed that EPAs will result in reduction and loss of revenue and sovereignty.

“We feel that in their current form if signed, the EPAs will lead to reduction and loss of revenue and sovereignty by the government resulting in job losses and will strangle the country’s right to pursue a home grown development agenda. We therefore recommend that signing of the EPAs due in December 2007 be postponed indefinitely to allow for more time for dialogue, consultations and negotiations,’ it stated.

Jubilee Zambia stated that there was need for coherence and consistency in the positions Africa adopts in all arena of relations and negotiations with the European Union (EU).

“It is increasingly clear that there is inadequate knowledge of the EPA negotiations within the various Regional Economic Communities (RECs), leading to a lack of information to the public about an agreement that has repercussions on their livelihood so it is important that the issues are not left simply to the cynical manipulations of the EU on one hand and to the deception of ACP regions on the other,” stated Jubilee Zambia.

Some of the partner organisations that attended the meeting include farmer associations, marketeers, faith based Organisations, political representatives, pensioners and trade unions.
They also called on the government to urgently attend to key areas of concern.

And speaking recently, Patel observed that European countries should stop preaching about free trade when their agriculture subsidies were killing the potential of the agriculture sector on the African continent.

“So before preaching Africans about virtues of EPA and free trade, let the rich countries first think about what their subsidies do to Africa and stop forthwith their unbridled liberalisation demands they make on Africa and other least developed countries (LDCs),” he said.

Patel said that EU members, such as Italy, France, Ireland and Spain among many others are steadfast in ensuring that they not only ’protect’ their farmers from opening up their markets, but also ensure that they continue with subsidies in one form or other.