The EU-ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) Economic Partnership Agreements and their Implications for Ethiopia
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Date
2011-01
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The Cotonou Agreement foresees setting up free trade, Economic
Partnership Agreements (EPAs), between the EU and regional ACP
configurations. Consequently, the preferential system for ACP export
products entering the EU market had to be replaced, beginning 1
January 2008, by a trade agreement based on reciprocity in a manner
that is WTO compatible.
Owing to the fact that most countries didn’t sign this agreement on the
basis of the time table, it was not possible to put this agreement in to
force and hence what is called the Interim Economic Partnership
Agreement has been initialed and signed by various ACP countries to
avoid trade disruption that may result from the expiry of the waiver from
WTO in December 31, 2007.
Ethiopia didn’t sign any of these agreements until today and have been
negotiating to be party to it. But there have been divergence in wide
range of issues, most of which are the major reasons for the country to
involve in this negotiation, between the EU and Ethiopia. These specially
include: the MFN provision, development cooperation, scope of
liberalization, use of quantitative restriction, export tax, customs
valuation agreement, loss of government revenue, competitiveness of
Ethiopian products following liberalization, substantial adjustment costs
the country will face, issues of regional integration and WTO+ issues in
the negotiation. Understandably, all of these issues have their own very
significant bearing on the market as well as overall economic activity of
the country and hence it is quite essential to have clear and sound
agreement that protects the best interest of the country on these issues.
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Keywords
The Cotonou Agreement foresees, setting up free trade, Economic,Partnership Agreements