Abstract
AbstractThis study provides early ex‐post empirical evidence on the effects of provisionally applied Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) on trade flows between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP). Employing the gravity model of trade, we do not find a general EPA effect on trade between ACP countries and the EU, but identify heterogeneous effects across specific agreements and economic sectors. While the CARIFORUM‐EU EPA rather reduced imports from the EU overall, other EPAs seem to have partly increased EU imports, particularly for the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) EPA partner countries. On the sectoral level, by comparison, we find increases in the EU's agricultural exports to SADC, Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) and the Pacific. In the area of manufactures trade, we find decreases of exports of the ESA and SADC countries to the EU, but increases in EU imports for SADC countries.
Highlights
The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) are free trade agreements (FTAs) that the European Union (EU) and 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries agreed to negotiate in the context of the 2000 Cotonou Partnership Agreement (Brandi et al 2017; Keijzer & Bartels, 2017). 12 Negotiations of these agreements were necessitated by the incompatibility of the EU’s longstanding system of unilateral trade preferences, granted to ACP countries independent of their income levels, with the non-discrimination principle of the World Trade Organization (WTO)
This paper aimed to analyse the trade effects arising from EPAs between the EU and a number of ACP countries
While we do not find any general EPA effect regarding aggregate exports, our findings suggest that specific agreements do affect trade flows
Summary
The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) are free trade agreements (FTAs) that the European Union (EU) and 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries agreed to negotiate in the context of the 2000 Cotonou Partnership Agreement (Brandi et al 2017; Keijzer & Bartels, 2017). 12 Negotiations of these agreements were necessitated by the incompatibility of the EU’s longstanding system of unilateral trade preferences, granted to ACP countries independent of their income levels, with the non-discrimination principle of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) are free trade agreements (FTAs) that the European Union (EU) and 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries agreed to negotiate in the context of the 2000 Cotonou Partnership Agreement (Brandi et al 2017; Keijzer & Bartels, 2017). 12 Negotiations of these agreements were necessitated by the incompatibility of the EU’s longstanding system of unilateral trade preferences, granted to ACP countries independent of their income levels, with the non-discrimination principle of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In contrast to unilateral trade preferences granted by the EU to ACP countries under the Lomé Conventions until the end of 2007, the EPAs demand commitments to liberalise trade reciprocally to make trade relations between the EU and the ACP countries WTO compliant.. EPAs and associated AfT programmes are perceived as an opportunity to promote trade integration and economic development
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