Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-26)
Mr Guy de Jonquières, Dr Christopher Stevens
and Ms Sheila Page
6 MAY 2008
Q20 Lord Trimble: More generally.
Ms Page: At a minimum—and this
is probably completely unrealistic because it goes against the
last 50 years of EU trade policy—stop a divide and rule.
The divide and rule within the WTO, the divide and rule in terms
of now trying to sign separate FTAs with basically anyone who
will talk, the divide and rule—it is too late to say it
now—with the ACP where the original Lomé Convention
was with the ACP as a group and then these had to be divided up
into separate regions and the final division did not really emerge
until about September last year which is a little late for negotiations
that happened in December. It needs to be clear that it should
not act from outside in the way Europeans blame the US for acting
when the EU was being formed and it should not expect that it
can form regions among other countries simply by pointing out
to them the advantages of it and maybe supplying a little bit
of money—foreign policy does not work that way. The pressure
put on the ACP regions and to some extent it is now putting on
the Central American and the Andeans which it is negotiating with
was to reach a point in terms of unity, of ability to negotiate
as a group which the EU frankly had not reached by the time of
the Uruguay round. It is expected that they do that within two
or three years because if you try to negotiate with countries
who act as a block and countries who are not ready to negotiate
as a block, either you will end up with a mess as Chris has described
or you will end up with a messy grouping which has been brought
together too quickly. This is probably most noticeable in the
Andean countries where it is not at all clear that Bolivia wants
to sign a free trade agreement with anyone, yet the Andean pact
can manoeuvre around this. But the Andean pact negotiating with
the EU cannot manoeuvre around it. Therefore, do not interfere,
do not divide, it is a series of negative things—and that
is pertinent even today.
Q21 Lord Trimble: I believe in your
report on EPAs you said that countries negotiating with the European
Union have got a deal that reflects their negotiating skills.
Dr Stevens: Yes.
Q22 Lord Trimble: I thought that
we were doing something to try and improve people's negotiating
skills in this matter—I have a vague recollection that was
an additional issue at one stage.
Ms Page: This is something that you have
to be very careful about. For one negotiator to try to tell another
country that is negotiating with it how to negotiate raises one
or two problems of conflict of interest. In the case of the EU
it actually tried to be present at the planning meetings of individual
ACP regions when they were planning how to negotiate with the
EU. I am pretty sure that DG Trade has a great many negotiating
skills which it is worthwhile imparting; I am not sure that this
was an entirely legitimate way of doing it. It probably would
be best for it not to try to improve negotiating skills as such
unless it tried to improve the negotiating skills of some country
with which it is not negotiating, and as far as I know there are
not any left. It could do much more in terms of some general training
in how a Department of Trade should work, general training in
terms of how industrial pressure groups should work from the CBI
training through its counterparts and TUC training though its
counterparts, that sort of thing can work and that thereby will
release resources within the country to do its own training of
negotiators. Indeed, what not only the EU but the UK as well directly,
and the US, have been doing in terms of actually direct action
with trade negotiators has been extremely dangerous and really
is something which needs to be watched rather than encouraged.
Dr Stevens: There are a number of problems
and the one to which Sheila has alluded is obviously a very clear
one. At the other end of the spectrum some of the countries which
clearly were most in need of support were unreceptive to receiving
it because they were all hoping that this thing would go away
and they would not have to do anything. The third problem is that
we were involved quite significantly in running training sessions,
independently funded by government, on what sort of interests
might you have—the trouble in all cases was that the comments
at the end were "This is very helpful, this is very useful
but how do we know that the EU will accept a negotiating position
framed in this way? Again, I come back to our initial exchange;
clearly, this is a very difficult area but to some degree there
could have been an opportunity at various times to give broad
guidelines—say the EU would have been willing to accept
broad principles—which would have given the peg on which
you could then hang the creation of a negotiating strategy. However,
the EU gave almost nothing away and indeed I have been at various
fora where it has been invited to offer a peg by European ministers
and has steadfastly declined to do so. These are the three problems
in this particular area and you can clearly see which countries
did a good deal and which ones clearly did not.
Q23 Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: I see
two lines of criticism here of the EU: one about modalities and
one, an underlying one, about substance.
Dr Stevens: Yes.
Q24 Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: On the
modalities one Dr Stevens has helpfully read into the record the
origins of the exercise: the EU would not have torn up Cotonou
unless it was obliged to do that by a WTO ruling, so against a
charge you have not made they have a good defence, it was not
their fault that we got into this mess. The most you are saying
is that we did not navigate our way through the mess optimally.
Dr Stevens: Correct.
Q25 Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: I would
suggest that it would have been quite difficult, even in an unenlarged
European Union, to achieve a perpetuation of ACP-type arrangements
given that, for example, the Spanish, concerned on behalf of Latin
America, did not quite share the enthusiasm of the French and
the British for Lomé and Cotonou—I simplify things,
of course. We now have a very different EU with a whole lot of
new Member States not many of whom have close organic links to
the developing countries we are talking about and all of whom
have their own economic development agendas. It is not quite like
the situation over South Africa nine or ten years ago, when our
EU negotiator was the brilliant Philip Lowe; he was not really
much reined in by the Council, he had a lot of running room, and
I thought he did a wonderful job. Isn't it much more difficult
now, the Council is different, inside the Commission it is more
difficult, for the guys you are criticising to get an absolutely
clear line even from the Commission let alone in the Council?
Do we perhaps need to bear that in mind when we think about your
no doubt well-founded criticisms of modalities?
Dr Stevens: Can I just respond on that?
Those are all very fair points and we probably cannot come to
a conclusion, but let me make two points. First of all for many
ACP countries the special system under GSP (Generalised System
of Preferences) which we call GSP Plus, which was introduced in
2005, would have formed a perfectly acceptable alternative to
Cotonou. They were deficient in not applying for it but when,
finally, the two countries did, they were told that the books
were closed and nothing would be done until 2009. The more proactive
involvement I am suggesting would have been to encourage countries
in 2005 to apply for GSP Plus and then at least you would have
got it then, but that was not done. My second point is that the
argument you have articulated that an EU of 27 is a very difficult
place has been made widely and it is perhaps the most important
lesson we have to prove. Lord Trimble's question of "are
the EPAs good for developing countries" becomes one as to
"can an EU27 still be considered a force for positive change
in the area of development or are the interests of the members
now so divisive that we have to think of the EU as being no longer
a pro-development and perhaps an anti-development force?"
Q26 Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: That
brings me to my second point, the point on substance, that there
is an underlying criticism which you have just come back to, and
which underlies some of the papers that we have seen. I am a very
old-fashioned, Mancunian-type liberal, and I think that the faster
a developing country liberalises the better. It seems to me that
the rather, at first sight, random pattern of degrees of liberalisation
which result from these EPAs is probably to a large extent not
the result of the malign efforts of wicked men in Brussels, but
rather the result of views in developing country capitals about
how rapidly they want to liberalise. It seems to me that the message
that you are addressing to the Commission and the Council of the
European Union is a message which perhaps ought to be principally
directed to developing countries. It is in their interest to pull
down barriers as fast as they possibly can; the effects on their
domestic price inflation and on their ability to specialise—all
the good results of liberalisation—should not be postponed
for too long.
Dr Stevens: We are all in favour of that—not
necessarily as fast as you can—but I think we would all
say never ever do it in relation to one trade partner alone which
is likely to have greater economic disadvantages than advantages,
only do it with respect to the whole of the rest of world.
Ms Page: One of the most serious criticisms
of EPAs is that in very small trade ministries—and many
of these countries have very small trade ministries—to have
to be carrying on a negotiation in Brussels, when probably it
is literally the same ambassador who is responsible to the WTO
as well, has been a serious hindrance in the WTO negotiations.
Chairman: It seems me that that is a very good place
to end this session. I am conscious that Mr de Jonquiéres
should have been gone a few minutes ago, so it remains for me
to thank you all very much for coming and say we have found this
all most interesting. Thank you.
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