Throughout the past 4 years the civil society of Burkina Faso and  West Africa, through its  farmers’ organisations, i.e. the National Farmers’ Union (CPF) and the Network of peasant organisations and agricultural producers (ROPPA), never ceased to repeat: “STOP the EPAs in their current form – the form which the European Union has tried to impose on the countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Today these forces can rejoice! Their voice has been heard!

We want an agreement “ which  matches the economic and social development aspirations of our countries and our populations”.

Since the end of 2003 the European Union and six blocks of countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP)[1], have been engaged in regional negotiations on economic partnership agreements, EPAs -  the trade chapter of the Cotonou Agreement of 2000, which reshapes co-operation between   Europe and the ACP. The EPAs are trade agreements which should promote development  by setting up segments of free trade areas between the EU and each of the ACP regions. They are to replace the preferential trade agreements that are incompatible with WTO rules. In 2001 the WTO,   the international trade organisation,  gave the EU and the ACP countries a waiver until December 31^st 2007 to redesign their trade relations.

On Friday, October 5^th, the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, which represents West Africa in the EPA negotiations,  officially requested an extended deadline. At a special session in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) the Ministerial Committee  (CMS)² in charge of the follow-up of the  negotiations  “found that the importance of activities still remaining to be undertaken (…) does not, in the  opinion of both parties, objectively make it possible to conclude a balanced, global agreement, which takes the concerns of West Africa into account.   

 The Committee notably believes that the drafting  of the terms of the agreement is not sufficiently advanced and that the necessary conditions for the introduction and financing of accompanying measures are not yet in place. Furthermore it finds that the region is not yet ready to submit a bid for access to its markets for goods and services, since the work on the list of “sensitive products” to be exempted from the agreement, has not yet been finalised. The Committee also specifies that the impact of EPAs on the West African economies has not yet been evaluated. In 2003 tax revenues of WAEMOU Member States (the West African Monetary Union ) accounted for 16-17% of their GDP and it is estimated that the adaptation and  implementation of the EPAs within the ECOWAS will cost them nearly 2.8 billion €.  Finally the Committee emphasises that the compensation for loss of tax revenues as a result of opening their markets, the follow-up and evaluation arrangements of the EPAs are still to be worked out.

Therefore the Committee asks the European Union for an extension of the deadline, beyond December 31^st 2007, in order to  pursue and conclude the EPA negotiations and calls on the European Union to file a request at the WTO for a further derogation in order to “maintain the current Cotonou

Arrangements and avoid penalising exports from the region, especially from the Least Developed Countries”,  in the words of the President of the ECOWAS Commission, Mr Mohamed Ibn Chambas.  “The purpose of the EPA is to provide a new, secure legal framework for our trade, but first and foremost to come up with a scheme that is good and fair, to the mutual advantage of both parties   and  in line with the social and economic development aspirations of our countries and our populations” , said Mr Chambas. 

In an interview with Reuters Press Agency on October 8^th,  Peter Power, spokesman for European Trade Commissioner,  Peter Mandelson, declared that “the derogation in force will expire at the end of this year and we need a new (trade) framework before that.” Peter Mandelson has himself reiterated several times in the past months that demanding a new deadline of the WTO was not an option, since other developing Member States of the WTO would not accept the current preferential agreements between the EU and the ACP.

 Ablasse Ouedraogo, special adviser to  Mohamed Ibn Chambas, told the same news agency that “we have the time to continue negotiations  before the WTO takes action against us”, adding that “it would take us less than two years (to finalise the talks)”. 

Failing an overall agreement, the European Commission had hopes that West Africa would accept a slimmed EPA, as proposed by Peter Mandelson and the European Development Commissioner Louis Michel. Such a WTO-compatible de minimis agreement would be refocused on goods and would be seen as a step on the way towards a full agreement. The West African representatives found that such an EPA-light “would not generate development and was based on the most controversial aspects of the negotiations, the opening up of markets and that it would not be possible to negotiate it before October 30^th, the ultimate limit for an entry into force on January 1st  2008.

1)    West Africa, Central Africa, East and Southern Africa, Austral-Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific.

2)    The West African region has set up a special body to conduct and follow negotiations, in the form of a Ministerial Committee of representatives of the two regional West African organisations, ECOWAS and WAEMOU.

3)    The trade agreements currently in force between the EU and the ACPs give free and unlimited access for imports from ACPs countries to  European markets. 

4)    Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Ghana are three ECOWAS states that do not belong to the group of LDCs (Least Developed Countries), unlike all the other ECOWAS countries, which thus have free and unlimited access to European markets under the “Anything but Arms” programme.