Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-66)
RT HON
PETER MANDELSON
AND MR
PETER THOMPSON
23 JANUARY 2007
Q60 Mr Davies: Is the third answer
to Hugh's question not that the foreign content rules under the
EPAs are much more favourable to the LDCs than the Everything
but Arms regime where foreign content has to be less than 25%
or so?
Mr Mandelson: You are talking
about the rules of origin, which you are quite right to focus
on. These need to be simplified and tailored. We need to undertake
that.
Q61 Mr Davies: But it will be better
than the present regime which applies to LDCs, which is the Everything
but Arms regime; that is the point. There is another carrot there.
Mr Mandelson: Yes, but the fact
that we need to do it for reasons that go beyond these particular
EPA negotiations is a source of some frustration and impatience
on my part, but we have to do it in particular in the EPA context.
Quite frankly, the Commission needs to speed up on this and put
its proposals in place. I want to stress one thing though on this.
Sometimes a confusion enters the picture in these EPA negotiations
between the period of negotiation that we have available to us
and the period of implementation for putting into effect what
we have agreed. Sometimes when I talk to ACP ministers they think
that the deadline for implementation is the end of this year.
It is not. The deadline that we are facing at the end of this
year is agreement on what we will do over a very lengthy implementation
period stretching into very many years ahead of us. Nobody is
asking ACP countries suddenly to turn on a sixpence on 1 January
2008 and implement all these changes. That is not what the WTO
is requiring. The terms of the WTO waiver are an agreement of
what they will do during the implementation period, not what they
will have to do in one go on 1 January. That is terribly important
because I think it is a source of some confusion.
Q62 Joan Ruddock: I just wanted to
ask what your idea of the timescale was in years.
Mr Singh: It is 12 years, is it not?
Joan Ruddock: 2020?
Mr Mandelson: A good 12 years.
Q63 Hugh Bayley: The Cotonou Agreement
says that the future will be no less favourable for ACP members,
both least-developed countries and non-least-developed countries,
than the status quo, that it will convey for ACP countries a trading
position that is no less favourable. Is that really compatible
with the WTO's requirements?
Mr Mandelson: Oh yes, and it will
be worth considerably more to them during the course of the implementation
period.
Hugh Bayley: For non-least-developed
countries too?
Mr Mandelson: Yes, also for non-LDCs.
There are certain sensitivities here and I have got to reach an
agreement with my colleagues inside this house about extending
EBA access to the non-LDCs, an agreement which in respect of certain
agricultural goods is creating some anxiety among some of my colleagues.
I readily acknowledge that we have to get our act together here
and forge an agreement amongst ourselves that will enable us to
make a good offer to the non-LDCs and that will be forthcoming
in the next month.
Hugh Bayley: And how long will EBA last?
Q64 Mr Davies: You have said, and
quite rightly you have been saying for several years since your
London School of Economics lecture, that aid and development and
trade have all got to be seen together, but let me put this to
you. We have heard some criticism that one reason (one reason
no doubt among others) why you are behind track on negotiating
the EPAs, and, God, what a disaster it would be if we did not
have either a Doha Round or the EPA—
Mr Mandelson: Because they do
not trust our ability to deliver the assistance in a timely way.
Q65 Mr Davies: No, that actually
you have not co-ordinated the development discussions with the
trade discussions with the Africans—this comes from the
Africans—and that the EU should have been providing a much
more co-ordinated approach involving not merely the trade and
the EPA negotiations and the elements of Singapore included in
the EPA regimes and all the things you have talked about today,
but also the aid package: aid for adjustment mechanisms, aid for
administration strengthening and so forth to deliver the EPAs,
aid coming not merely from the Cotonou Agreement, the EDF, but
also EuropeAid and member states' aid programmes should all have
been talked about as one coherent package and has not been. How
do you respond to that criticism?
Mr Mandelson: My response is that
partially they have a valid criticism to make. Our record on delivery
of performance has not been consistently high and if you take
the action programme that was connected with the banana reform,
for example, the special framework of assistance as it is called,
disbursement was—
Mr Thompson: Slow.
Mr Mandelson: Slow—is that
what you call it?
Mr Thompson: Apparently it has
improved.
Mr Mandelson: I was going to say
"patchy", but this criticism has been taken on and we
have raised our performance. However, there is another point to
be made here, which is that they will either want more development
assistance or they want development assistance re-badged so that
it is specifically linked and called EPA development assistance.
Mr Davies: But that is in our interests
if we want the EPA agreements.
Mr Mandelson: Of course at one
level it is, except that if it is an argument for increasing the
totals of development assistance and aid we are providing then
(a) I cannot persuade the member states to do that at this stage,
especially when nothing has been negotiated,—
Mr Davies: It is an argument for co-ordinating
existing resources.
Mr Mandelson: —and (b) it
is not a problem of quantity; it is a problem of use and take-up
and implementation, and frankly I think some amongst the ACP are
hiding behind these issues in order to forestall the negotiation.
I looked into this with considerable vigour. I am entirely satisfied
that it is not a shortfall of development assistance, nor in principle
is it an inadequate mode of delivery, although even now I am sure
that could be improved. It is, I am afraid, that arguments about
money are being used to shelter behind much-needed changes in
policy and my firm view is that development assistance is not
a substitute for good development policy and it is the changes
in development policy and governance that are needed as much as,
if not more than, additional sums of money. I am going to have
to go now because I have to go to a different parade ground.
Q66 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed.
Mr Mandelson: I hope it was helpful.
I have here for you copies of a speech I made in Amsterdam last
night about the European Constitutional Treaty if anyone is interested
in wider European matters.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
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