POL 5032 WEEK VIII

The EU/SADC Trade Agreement:  Whither multilateralism? How will regional trade play out within the North/South divide?

Questions:

a). What are the core elements that describe the new EU/SADC Trade Agreement? 

b). Can we discern both continuity and change?

c). Does the EU/SADC Trade Agreement signal the death knell of multilateral trade agreements within the WTO?

d). Does the new EU/SADC Agreement signal a new projection of economic power from the EU?

 Does the European Union’s agreement with SADC signal any change in EU policy?  Or can we argue that the Trade Agreement is merely a continuance of French dominance over EU trade policy as it strives to hold onto past political and imperial glory?  In Christian Salmon’s terms, Does the agreemnt allow the French Right to glorify and resusitate ‘the colonial imagary of France’ against the Lefts ‘economic conquest of the world’?  Is the international stage simply another area where the intellectual fight over the future of the EU is being fought as a proxy war?  I am indebted to Miro Koehler’s input in generating the following arguemnt below.

 Can we use France as a metaphor for European trade poicy today?  To my mind, there is no doubt that in the past the core guiding principle behind France’s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) with African, Caribbean and Pacifiic (ACP) countries has been self-interest and this has not changed at all. Also despite its extensive use of a fraternal rhetoric, France’s attempt to extend, maintain and defend its colonial trade patterns throughout the post-WWII era and into the 21st Century has been a major force driving its trade and aid regime. Africa has traditionally been an important supplier of key natural resources for France’s economy, and this still holds today. Uranium supplies from Niger are particularly important for France’s energy security as France  is the second largest nuclear power producer worldwide with 75 per cent of its electricity production dependant on stable uranium supplies. Also France’s former African colonies, still today, represent Paris’ main pré carré, i.e. its main sphere of influence.

 Nevertheless, France’s power in the international system was significantly diminished by WW II, something that was in clear contradiction to the overblown French pretensions of grandeur. Thus Africa’s support has proven strategic in the context of France’s position within the framework of the United Nations (UN) forums and the UN Security Council. Between 15 and 20 African states traditionally vote in favour of France in major UN debates. Accordingly, French development policy has sought to lock in the historical relations with its former colonies, since having an almost exclusive sphere of influence in Africa has been essential to France’s post-WW II aspirations of regaining global significance.  As the French President Francois Mitterrand stated in 1957: “Without Africa, there will be no History of France in the 21st Century.”

 The Lomé Agreement, signed in 1975, was by many considered a unique and extremely development-oriented approach. However, the agreement was arguably less of an altruistic approach than France’s attempt to maintain a tight grip on its colonies, and to extend its sphere of influence to non-francophone Africa. The importance of establishing a credible image of representing Africa’s interest in Brussels did force Paris to grant considerable concessions to Africa under the Lomé Agreement. However, this only occurred to ensure the loyalty and political support of these countries, as it continued to lock in African trade patterns.  In Brussels, the Lomé convention was perceived as a set of trade and aid concessions, which had to be granted to the ACP group in order to secure energy supplies from Africa; a concern which had arisen from the OPEC oil crisis in the early 1970s.

 The fall of the Berlin Wall did change French, and by implication European trade policy. Now France is more than happy to include the former Cold-War trouble spots, such as Namibia, Mozambique or Angola. In the absence of the Cold War competition for ideological alignment, the need to buy African loyalty is even more important.  Thus, France and the EU increasingly promoted the idea of locking in Afro-European trade through WTO compliant regional integration.

 The expiry of the Lome IV convention provided the opportunity to adapt to the new challenges of the 21st  Century by restructuring Afro-European trade under the Cotonou Agreement. The Lome Agreement had come under heavy criticism by the WTO due to the discriminatory nature of the agreement. Non-reciprocal trade violated GATT Article XXIV and thus, in order to comply with WTO regulations and show its commitment to fair and non-discriminatory trade, the EU’s future agreements with the ACP group had to be of a reciprocal nature.

 The EU, however, has never really been forced to adapt a reciprocity-based, and thus WTO-compliant, cooperation agreement with Africa. Neither Lome nor Cotonou were ever officially challenged by the WTO and Europe has fought heavily for the maintenance of other WTO-violating agreements, such as those regulating the import of bananas, sugar, beef and rum. Since in addition, the EU member states have considerable influence on WTO regulations, WTO compliance should rather be seen as a convenient legitimization of the EU’s approach of returning to pre-Lome trade liberalization. The Cotonou Agreement was thus based on a rhetoric emphasizing Afro-European partnership in the fight against poverty, to be achieved through deeper regional integration between the two regions. However, the EU’s promotion of such a trade model was not really aligned to the official objective of poverty alleviation, but more at securing for itself continued market access and privileged economic status in the continent’s emerging markets. The EU’s aid for trade approach, which saw the mobilization of considerable amounts of EU aid to address trade-related constraints in Africa’s economies, must thus be seen as a counter strategy with respect to China’s increasing aid for export-facilitating investments in infrastructure.  With China in mind, and in order to secure its economic relations with Africa, the EU incorporated into the Cotonou Agreement an arrangement providing for the expiration of non-reciprocal trade preferences. These Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) divided the ACP group into several economic blocs forming a variety of regional integration agreements. The EPAs comply with WTO regulations yet are still able to offer African countries preferential treatment, and must be understood as a renewed attempt to lock in historical preferential trade relations with African resource suppliers.

Today, Europe’s trade and aid regime is still characterized by self-interest, particularly in the sense that it uses trade and aid as a foreign policy tool in order to increase its structural power and play a more important role in the international arena.  In essence, France has managed to keep alive Europe’s trade agreements with Africa to allow it preferential access to African raw materials, regardless of the changes in the international environment.  The question we have to answer then, is whether the European Union is not painting the EU/SADC Agreement with the same old brush?