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Pacific EPA to be concluded by 2012

25 February 2012

After reviewing the progress of the EPA negotiations at their Auckland meeting in September 2011, in the context of the 2011 Pacific Plan progress report, Pacific Island Forum (PIF) leaders noted the high priority placed by the region on the successful conclusion to the EPA negotiations in 2012. This message was reiterated by both the Solomon Islands Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Robert Sisilo, at the meeting of the ACP Ministerial Trade Committee in Brussels in December 2011, and the PACP ministerial spokesperson on EPAs, ’Isileli Pulu, Tonga’s Minister for Labour, Commerce and Industries, who reiterated the PACP mandate for concluding a comprehensive EPA as a single region.

The conclusion of a comprehensive Pacific EPA as a single region, however, is seen as conditional on the EU responding with flexibility on the remaining contentious issues (e.g. export taxes, global sourcing for fresh and frozen fish, development cooperation, non-execution, infant industry, standstill clauses). Mr Sisilo noted that similar flexibility had been demonstrated by the PACP governments through their revised market access offers and legal texts on contentious issues which were submitted to the EC in July 2011.

The PACP ministerial spokesperson on EPAs acknowledged however that some PACP states still need to finalise some aspects of their work before the formal negotiations with the EU in 2012. They are attending to this over and above their ongoing commitments to the negotiations on the extension of the PICTA to include trade in services and the recently-started PACER-Plus negotiations with Australia and New Zealand. The governments of two PACP states, Samoa and Vanuatu, have been working in 2011 on WTO accession agreements. While the accession of Samoa was approved in December 2011 at the 8th WTO Ministerial, and Vanuatu prior to that, these parallel negotiating processes have been stretching PACP negotiating capacities. The region nevertheless remains committed to moving forward on the EPA negotiations.

In mid January 2012, press analysis citing an anonymous retired Pacific trade negotiator set out the range of issues which remain unresolved in the negotiations. These included:

  • the absence of ‘development measures’;
  • the absence of progress on bilateral market access offers tabled by Pacific governments;
  • the absence of progress on proposed texts related to ‘contentious issues’,
  • the Pacific request for further improvement in rules of origin for a wider range of fisheries products;
  • shifting positions and lack of agreement on the basis for agreements on fisheries access for EU vessels.

Editorial comment

While many of the unresolved issues relate primarily to non-agricultural issues, the uncertainties generated by a lack of clarity over when and how negotiations will be concluded does carry implications for at least one agricultural sector, namely Fiji’s sugar sector. Uncertainty over future market access for sugar exports to the EU is complicating efforts to secure support from a strategic partner for the restructuring and modernisation of the sugar sector (to move it in a direction similar to the Mauritian restructuring model, in order to take advantage of shifting patterns of global demand for sugar).

Beyond coffee and sustainable palm oil exports, little substantial trade in agricultural and food products takes place between PACP states and the EU (relative to trade between PACPs and their Pacific Rim neighbours). In addition, intra-regional trade in food and agricultural products is limited. 

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