Anti-poverty Gps Protest Over EU,Ex-colonies Free Trade Talks

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BRUSSELS (AP)--Anti-poverty activists demonstrated outside European Union headquarters Thursday to demand a halt to free trade negotiations between the E.U. and former European colonies that they argue will undermine development in poor countries.

A coalition of aid groups and anti-poverty advocates, including Oxfam and Action Aid, said five years of talks between the E.U. and members of the 78- country Asia-Caribbean-Pacific - or ACP - grouping had to be halted because they offered poor nations little to no benefit.

Campaigners stacked boxes representing E.U. goods in front of the E.U.'s external relations and trade department to protest the negotiations.

"We think that this agreement, which is going to open these ACP countries' markets to European products is going to cause serious industrial and agricultural problems in these countries," said Kwaku Acheampong from Ghana, who works for the Belgian-based aid group Fund for Development Cooperation.

He said the E.U. would use the pacts to unfairly dump subsidized agricultural goods on African markets, making it impossible for local farmers to compete.

"They should pay more attention to development issues," Acheampong said.

E.U. Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has appealed to ACP countries to come to an agreement on the so-called Economic Partnership Agreements by the end of the year or face possible import tariffs.

Mandelson argues the new regional pacts are needed to overhaul the E.U.'s special trade ties with Europe's former colonies because they violate world trade rules. The World Trade Organization has set a Jan. 1 deadline for the E.U. to come to a new settlement with the ACP group of countries, because older trade deals are unfair to non-ACP members.

In a letter to protesters, Mandelson and E.U. Development Commissioner Louis Michel acknowledged the negotiations were difficult but said stopping the talks would do more damage.

"Calling for an end to EPA negotiations when there is no credible alternative is playing poker with the livelihoods of those we are trying to help," Mandelson and Michel said.

E.U. officials acknowledged that old rules allowing preferential access to E.U. markets combined with billions of euros in aid has done little to spur development since the E.U. set up special trade and aid ties with the grouping in 1975.

Negotiations have stalled over African nations' fears that they aren't ready to handle regional trade among themselves or to lose exclusive preferred access for their goods to European markets.

The aid groups were joined by the International Trade Union Confederation, which represents labor unions worldwide. It called on Mandelson to seek an extension to an end-of-year deadline imposed by the WTO to redraft the trade pacts.

In a letter sent to Mandelson, trade union leaders pointed to an E.U. working group review of the negotiations that found "substantial" differences still exist between E.U. and African, Caribbean and Pacific country groupings, including market access, liberalization of sectors and the list of products that can be protected.

"These issues are too important to be dealt with in the last rush," they said.

The negotiations, begun in 2002, are way behind schedule. African countries have balked at E.U. demands that they group into regional trade pacts and drop trade barriers between themselves and with the 27-nation E.U.

Many of the ACP countries are loath to give up more than three decades of privileged access to E.U. markets.

The trade accords foresee gradual market openings in parallel with E.U. funding for good governance and reforms in developing nations to spur trade among them.

Over the past months, Mandelson and Michel have held numerous rounds of talks with the six regional groupings negotiating trade pacts with the E.U. The E.U. wants to reach pacts with the Caribbean, West Africa, East and Southern Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, and the Pacific regional grouping.

The ACP nations are mostly ex-European colonies. The E.U. has promised them a doubling of aid to EUR2 billion by 2010.