European commissioner in bid to sell EPA to SA

Europe’s top agriculture official, Mariann Fischer Boel, was expected to meet her South African counterparts in agriculture and trade and industry yesterday in an attempt to convince SA to sign a European Union (EU) trade partnership agreement (EPA), as part of the EU’s commitment to liberalise international trade with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.

Fischer Boel, the EU commissioner for agriculture and rural development, said at the World Meat Congress yesterday that she would be meeting Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana and Deputy Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies while in SA “to try to widen the possibilities” of trade between SA and the EU by pointing out the benefits of such a partnership agreement.

Fischer Boel said the EU wanted the EPA to be implemented in SA as it would improve the possibilities for South African producers, including beef producers, to be more visible in the EU market.

The EU accounts for more than 40% of African exports, including those from SA.

She said an example of how the EPA could benefit SA could be gleaned from the Namibian experience, following that country’s recent conclusion of such an EPA deal with the EU.

“Just ask the Namibian beef producers, they’re quite happy,” said Fischer Boel. Fischer Boel said EPAs were supplementary to the stalled Doha round of trade negotiations and “do not exclude our efforts to try and finalise the Doha round”.

“It’s just a question of opening up further trade with some developing countries,” she said. She agreed with Xingwana that the stalled Doha talks could be revived soon, but that would not happen until there was a new administration in the US and Indian elections had been concluded.

The Doha round of negotiations, aimed at liberalising world trade, stalled in July after “95% of agreement” had been reached on agricultural issues, considered the biggest hurdle in achieving international trade agreements.

The talks foundered after the US and India refused to compromise over a proposed safeguard mechanism which would have allowed developing countries to protect poor farmers by raising tariffs to counter subsidised imports.

Speaking at yesterday’s congress, Xingwana said developing nations were prepared to “go back to Geneva” to conclude the talks, but believed the first move had to come from the developed countries, particu-larly the US.

She said a major issue for SA was the “distorting domestic support” of subsidies given to farmers in the US “which ends up strangling poor farmers in developing countries”.