‘Global Europe’ and the Economic Partnership Agreements

Abstract

In ‘Global Europe’ the Commission was careful to distinguish between Europe’s ‘ain trade interests’ predominantly in East and South Asia, and its trade agreements with the ACP — seen as the flagship of its development policy — which supposedly served ‘evelopment objectives’ (European Commission 2006g:10–11). Since ‘lobal Europe’- and although arguably this is not an entirely novel development as commercial considerations have played a role in EU-ACP relations in the past — it has become increasingly difficult to disentangle the EU-ACP relationship from the EU‘wider ’ommercial’trade relations. After a period of relative neglect under Lamy, Mandelson’s DG Trade strongly insisted for the new EPAs being negotiated with ACP states — what amount to ‘symmetrical’1 FTAs featuring a development assistance component which replace the EU’s previous Lomé regime of non-reciprocal trade preferences — to feature ‘WTO-plus’, regulatory liberalisation provisions; this is notwithstanding the fact that the original justification given for these agreements was one of WTO compliance, as Lomé was judged to be in contravention of multilateral trade rules (see Heron 2013: Ch. 2). These provisions, in turn, have borne a striking resemblance to the texts of several of the EU’s ‘Global Europe’ FTAs.