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Legal issues in international agricultural trade: WTO compatibility and negotiations on economic partnership agreements between the European Union and the African, Carribbean and Pacific States

Year of publication 2006

Pages 26 p.

Author Desta, M.G.

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Book (series)

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) The trade relations between the EU as a bloc on the one hand and the ACP countries as a bloc on the other, have for the last three decades been based on a series of “bilateral” treaties designed to provide non-reciprocal preferential terms of access for the products of the latter to the markets of the former – from Lomé I (1975-80), to Lomé II (1980-85), to Lomé III (1985-90), to Lomé IV (1990-1995, later revised and extended to stay until 2000, known as Lome IV bis), and finally to Cotonou (200 0 to 2008).1 It is interesting to observe at the outset that prior to Lomé ‘a number of ACP countries had granted reverse preferences to the EEC’.2 The Lomé process was therefore not just about creation of preferential market access for the products of ACP countries to the EC; it was also about dismantling those pre- Lomé reverse preferences for EC products to access ACP markets, thereby establishing non-reciprocity as the core principle of the Lomé acquis on trade matters. This is set to change now in several important ways and the seed of that change has already been planted in the Cotonou Agreement itself. Indeed, reintroduction of reverse preferences – also called reciprocity – will be a fundamental feature of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) that are being negotiated at this moment under the Cotonou agenda.

Language English

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