EU Reaches Interim Free Trade Pact With 5 East African Nations

from Canadian Business

Constant Brand

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - European Union negotiators concluded an interim free trade pact with five east African nations, EU officials said Tuesday.

The deal is part of the EU's efforts to reach new aid-and-trade deals with members of the 78-nation Africa-Caribbean and Pacific group before a Dec. 31 deadline set by the World Trade Organization.

The WTO ordered the EU to bring its 30-year-old preferential trade ties Europe's former colonies in line with world trade regulations after it ruled they were unfair to nations excluded from the arrangement.



The latest deal, which applies to Kenya, Unganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, is only a partial one, EU officials said.

The agreement focuses on opening up bilateral trade links with these countries. But at this point it will apply only to goods, not to services, as was foreseen when the EU began trade talks with ACP group of nations more than five years ago.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said the agreement "will prevent trade disruption and allow the EU to open its markets fully to exports" from the five nations as of Jan. 1.

A similar interim deal was reached on the weekend with four southern African nations, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique.

That deal excluded Angola, South Africa and Namibia, which have said they do not want to participate in the new Economic Partnership Agreements, or EPAs.

Negotiations are still ongoing with four other regions to conclude EPAs, including the Caribbean, the Pacific, western Africa and central Africa.

Anti-poverty groups like Oxfam have accused EU nations of trying to force the new trade pacts on the poor nations, which they argue are ill equipped to open up their fragile national markets to competition from European goods.

Mandelson said last week he still hoped to conclude negotiations with the other groups by the end of the year.

The EU trade chief has warned that nations which do not reach accords with the EU by January will automatically lose the preferential privileges that have been in place for three decades and receive only limited access to EU markets under existing world trade rules.