The Kitui Ginnery
The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), which has been under negotiation since 2007, seeks to create a deal giving East Africa Community (EAC) products a duty- and quota-free access to the EU market.
However, there has been some hesitance among several East African countries, which fear that the trade deal could adversely affect the bloc’s goals of industrialization. Two European Union Members of Parliament Marie Arena and Julie Ward are opposed to the trade deal terming it as not good in its current form for East African countries and their emerging industries.
Recently , East African Heads of State asked for an additional three months to consider the EU-EAC trade deal before agreeing on a unanimous decision on the way forward. According to the MPs, this kind of agreement is unfair for the region. Europe has pushed a hard negotiation and taken Kenya as a leader due to her key interests in the agreement. Kenya is not a least developed country to be able to access the European Market, which is not the case for Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi, who have access to the EU market.
If the bloc signs the agreement, the MPs said, you have no more preferences across certain products entering your market with unfair competition. European competitively is higher and could cause you to lose your tax across certain products as well as lose the infant industries competing with European imports.
“We have to convince the European parliament that going ahead with this agreement is not good for Africa as we are trying to have a new real partnership with Africa. Real partnership, that always works in our favor. We, however, need the support of countries from the region (EAC),” they said. We need the EAC countries to call for the increased protection beyond what is provided for in the agreement to ensure the competitiveness of their products.
According to the MPs, Rwanda will not be among the least developed countries by 2020, EU is in full support of that, but we think they should wait till they are not in the least developed countries category before entering such an agreement. “When you are a medium level country, then you can be in a better position to negotiate such kind of an agreement, “the EU legislators added.
For Rwanda and other countries in the region, what is more important at the moment is the regional markets of East Africa. “You have to form close ties to trade across the region and this is why wanted to guarantee Kenya access to the European market at the same time giving attention to intra-region, which bears more potential for African countries, “they said. Now Kenya will have access to the European market without mobilizing other EAC countries to be a part of the deal.
In order to protect some industries in East Africa, there are a lot of things that should be incorporated into the agreement for the sake of East African countries. “One of them is more protection of infant industries. Although there is a mechanism at the moment, it is very difficult to activate and the EU has to protect the infant industries for the long term development of the industries, the MPs said.
The European Union needs a chapter and clauses on sustainable development for people and the environment and as much as the Union does business, it needs sustainability. “It is important to have a chapter binding for social development and environment and the Union is aware that it is not easy to have this coming from Africa but it is important to protect people from certain kinds of practices in businesses, “they added.
In January 2014, the European parliament endorsed an alternative trade mandate which is not binding and legislative but largely about sustainability, people and the environment. “It is time that we had such clauses added into the trade agreement. It is a bit odd that though sustainability is part of the interest of Europe, it was not incorporated in this agreement,” they said.
According to Marie and Julie, It is not that EU does not want to trade with the East African region but the deal should be mutually beneficial and respect East Africa’s interests too as much as it does European interests. EU has a lot of information from bodies like the International Trade Centre showing that it will damage the local (EAC) industry.
In order for East Africa countries to improve their terms of negotiation with the union, the first thing that needs to be conducted is an impact assessment study before agreeing to the agreement and signing it. This is important if EU want to have a fair agreement. It is not Africa against Europe or vice versa but it is about having mutual benefits. “We cannot say that we want people to be well and go ahead to push through with agreements that will make them poor. The impact assessment should reflect on how the deals and agreements influence social, political and development aspects of lives.
According to the MPs, fair agreement and deals are some of the factors that end up causing people to migrate and at the moment, migration is a very big issue in Europe. “The best way is to be coherent in our political thoughts and have to look out for Africa as we insist on doing business with them. However, here on the one hand, we are talking about factors that cause people to migrate from Africa while, on the other hand, we keep supporting policies that cause them to migrate out of poverty. Migration and trade are closely related,” they said.
The Legislators termed the Cotonou Agreement as an avenue which informs Africa-Europe cooperation in the areas of development governance and trade. At the moment, we are only doing trade, we should have the others too implemented, and that is development and governance.
Kenya has severally been mentioned as being used to influence the rest of the EAC region, a point that the legislators oppose. According to the MPs, “It is difficult to do country based deals since they do not support the regional aspect which is crucial and EU needs to have politics which aim at improving the regional development for Africa,” they said.
According to the legislators, if this deal is only in the interest of one country, it is not sustainable or impactful. There has to be long term investment in Africa because that is a way to enable development and sustainability. “We have to promote investments to promote sectors like agriculture to make the sector more productive and need to convince investors to come to Africa and work with the local industries not only for productivity but also for food security and food sovereignty. This can be through ‘smart’ agriculture where technology can be incorporated to make the sectors more productive, “they added.
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