Experts assessing the likely impact of an Economic Partnership Agreement with Europe, forecast that OECS Member Countries will not suffer dire consequences when that reciprocal arrangement is established in January 2008.

The forecast shows the Fiscal, Trade and Poverty impacts will “not be too large”. Dr. Patrick Antoine, a strategic Trade Policy Adviser is leading the OECS/Europe EPA impact Assessment team. He spoke to the OECS News-Link as member countries met in Castries from August 3rd to 4th 2006 to review a draft impact assessment of a reciprocal Economic Partnership Agreement with Europe.

Dr. Antoine says the urgency now lies in institutional strengthening. “The institutional strengthening component I think is going to be the sine qua non for a successful EPA for the OECS Countries. …All of these will require some  very serious institutional arrangements to be first negotiated and then put in place, with implications for organizations and for the public sector structures that would have to go along with that and for expertise to staff those institutional and organizational structures. Those are going to be the very important issues that the OECS will have to focus on with Europe if this is to be meaningful. Without the resources to do that this works out to be a Trade Agreement which is not the commitment  that we signed in 2000 with the Europeans when we signed COTONOU which  is supposed to be a  development agreement which focuses on poverty alleviation development among other areas, which goes way beyond a trade agreement like what we have now with many other countries such as Costa Rica. This is far more than that and if we have to be faithful to the political mandate that we gave ourselves the institutional dimension  and development resources will be critical and that will strengthen our hand on Services and the other sectors that we have an interest in pushing right now.”

Dr. Antoine told the OECS News-Link OECS Member Countries must have several fundamental; institutional strengthening mechanisms in place, even if all conditions are not met when the time comes for signing the OECS Europe Economic Partnership Agreement. “When we start this on the first of January 2008 we will not be ready with all the elements. We will have to go ahead with some elements up front and we will have to work towards institutional capacity development before we can undertake additional commitments and that undertaking these commitments will basically be part of our agreement. But when we undertake them will depend on whether and when we do get resources to put the technical capacity in place to develop the organizational structures and to put the laws and regulations in place. That’s really what this will depend on. Looking at this as we enter January 2008… it will be a partial agreement which will depend on the resources coming forward and how we structure that will be important.”-Antoine

The rational for the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States pursuing an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union is based on the existing relationship between both territories. Director of the OECS Economic Affairs Division Randolf Cato explained this as he chaired the two day meeting involving trade experts, negotiators and private sector officials from across the sub region. Cato indicated that the pending Economic Partnership Agreement is a matter of enhancing the sub-region’s relationship with Europe. “What we are looking at is a continuation of those arrangements into a new form in terms of the Economic Partnership Agreement to enable Trade and Development Cooperation between Europe and the ACP countries and in this context the Caribbean and most specifically the OECS.”

Cato told the OECS News Link opportunities are also available for similar arrangements with other territories. ”We are now looking at what kind of development corporation relations we can have in a renewed form within the United States. There will be a meeting in a couple of months with the appropriate US personnel to begin to define the basis of moving forward in that regard. There is CARIBCAN. We are now awaiting some indications from the Canadians as to what form there might be in new corporation arrangements. We are looking at the possibilities of putting relationships with the South America or “MERCOSUR” countries into some kind of formal and structured basis. So there are all kinds of opportunities of this nature. With the current situation with the WTO negotiations