The European Commission’s Directorate General for Trade last week organised a seminar in Brussels titled Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) of trade agreements: making trade sustainable. The aim of the seminar, which brought civil society organisations, private sector representatives and government representatives together with consultants commissioned to carry out the assessments, was to offer a platform for exchanges and reflections on the assessments being carried out by the Commission. It was supposed to address the EU’s strategy for SIAs, the trade negotiations frameworks, and the methodology, process and content of SIAs.

Following the Gothenburg and Laeken EU Councils of Head of States, the European Commission is now obliged to carry out sustainability impact assessments of all major EU policy initiatives. Sustainability is looked at in terms of three pillars: economic, environmental and social. Levels of poverty are supposed to be an important indicator in assessing sustainability.

Eurostep was represented by Guggi Laryea. Representatives from member organisations - KEPA and WEED/terre des hommes were also present. The Seminar included separate workshops on most of the different trade negotiations/agreements that the EU is engaged in, i.e. WTO, EU-Chile/Mercosur, EU-MEDA and EU-ACP.

In the workshop on EU-ACP trade Eurostep put forward the following suggestions:

• It should be recognised that the responsibility for implementing the findings of the SIA should be shared by the EU and the ACP. It should not be seen as only an ACP responsibility.
• The negotiations themselves need to be made far more transparent and accessible to stakeholders if the SIA process is going to effectively contribute to new ACP-EU trade arrangements.
• New efficient methods of capacity building in support of developing countries and their citizens to participate in the SIA process and to implement the findings of SIAs are needed. The funds for this and mechanisms for disbursement should be clearly identified.
• There needs to be a concerted effort to synchronise the SIA process to the negotiations as regards its timetable and its ability to input in the negotiations.
• The SIA process should be given high level political support and involve discussions with Member States, the European Parliament and the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly.

If all the above conditions are met, especially that regarding the making SIAs more participatory, then following consultation with stakeholders, the findings of the SIA process need to be fully integrated in the outcome of the negotiations, i.e. the new trade arrangements. They should be legally binding and be monitored with safeguards for implementation.

For more information of the SIA on ACP-EU Trade see http://www.sia-acp.org/acp/uk/news.php.  An official report of the seminar should be shortly available.

The 3rd ACP-EU ambassadorial trade negotiations round took place this week in Brussels. Issues on the agenda included: legal affairs, flanking measures and implications of Economic Partnership Agreements, agriculture and fisheries agreements, and preparations for the 4th ACP-EU Ministerial Trade Committee. At a press conference following the meeting, the ACP Secretary General, Mr Goulongana, stated that the parties had been able to identify points on which they agree on, however there has been little agreement on the following:

• The ACP is of the view that there should be additional financial resources included in the package of Economic Partnership Agreements. The EU however feels that existing resources are adequate.
• The EU view the principle of gradual elimination of barriers to trade stated in the Cotonou Agreement as a call for trade reciprocity, but the ACP believe that there should be an in depth examination of how this principle is applied taking account of levels of development.

The ACP believes that there should be six distinct groupings of issues for discussions in the negotiations: legal questions, market access, trade related areas, services, agriculture, and fisheries. But the EU is of the view that many of these issues could be discussed within one grouping.

The next ACP-EU trade ministerial committee will take place on 27 February- 1 March in Saint Lucia.

On other trade related issues, the Secretary General at the press conference expressed the ACP’s interests and concerns about the WTO negotiations relating to the question of access to medicines and the discussions around Special and Differentiated Treatment. Another issue of concern to the ACP is the challenges being made by ‘third parties’ to ACP trade preferences with the EU. Talking about the recent challenge to ACP preferences on trade in tuna by the Philippines, he said some EU Member States have failed to back the ACP within the WTO. He said the ACP would be pushing the EU within the WTO to be more consistent in backing the preferences to the ACP that it has committed itself to.

• The European Commission will allocate €5 million to tackle some severe humanitarian needs in Somalia. The aid will target those sectors where needs are greatest, namely health, water and sanitation, and food security. It be channelled through the Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO) and administered by ECHO partners in the field (United Nations Agencies, International Red Cross and NGOs)

• The European Commission has adopted a €24 million package to support humanitarian needs of mainly Burundian and Congolese refugees in Tanzania for 2003. The funds, taken from ECHO budget, will finance interventions concerning food aid, logistics, water and sanitation, as well as nutrition, health, shelter and protection of vulnerable groups (women and children)

• The European Parliament has adopted a joint resolution on the WTO and generic medicines criticising the American unilateral position, which puts forward on a narrow list of medicines for which WTO intellectual property rules would be waived. MEPs argue the access to affordable medicines within the TRIPS agreement should be discussed jointly by the WTO and the WHO in the three years following the agreement implementation, in order to ensure the rules are consistent with the spirit of the Doha Declaration. The Parliament also call the competent European authorities for the establishment of a permanent register of generic and other medicines in the framework of trade agreements, to ensure the effectiveness of inspections for preventing re-importation of these medicines in European market

• The Pro€Invest programme within the framework of ACP-EU cooperation for the promotion of investments in ACP countries is organising a regional workshop in Lusaka, Zambia on 20 February on the development capacity building of institutions and organisations of the African regional group COMESA. For further information contact +32 2 679 19 23 [email protected]

• The European Commission has put out a brochure titled “Making trade work for development: from theory to practice”. The brochure aims to catalogue examples of trade facilitating projects financed by the EU that have worked in developing countries. The Commission has also apparently established a ‘Help Desk’ within its Trade Directorate that is supposed to help exporters from developing countries overcome administrative, regulatory and technical difficulties. The brochure can be found at http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/miti/devel/broch_en.pdf

• According to the European Voice the European Commission is ready to invoke emergency procedures allowing it to provide €3 million in aid in the event of a war with Iraq within one to three days.

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