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EU–ACP Economic Partnership Agreements:
The Effects of Reciprocity
Christopher Stevens and Jane Kennan
Institute of Development Studies, Sussex
Speculation about Economic Partnership Agreements
(EPAs) abounds: will they support the regional
integration of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP)
countries as the EU claims, or lay these economies
open to subsidised European exports as some critics
allege? This Briefing Paper suggests that both views are
uninformed and incorrect.
It is impossible to know exactly what will be in an EPA
until one nears completion, which may not be for
another two years. But it is possible to make some
informed speculations now. As part of a project to
support ACP preparations for the detailed phase of EPA
negotiations, IDS has undertaken a comprehensive
review of the trade and tariff structure of almost all ACP
states (see Box 1).1
Making plausible assumptions about the strategic
choices of ACP governments on reciprocity, the
research comes to startling conclusions. The claim that
EPAs will necessarily result in ACP markets being
thrown open to EU imports appears to be overstated,
but evidence suggests that they may well cause serious
problems for regional integration and for government
revenue.
Reciprocity
Whilst EPA preparations are required on a large number
of issues, this project has concentrated on one key
element, known as reciprocity. Under the trade regimes
that have linked them to Europe for three decades, the
ACP have not been required to treat imports from the
EU differently from those sourced in other industrialised
countries. Under EPAs, by contrast, the ACP will be
expected to remove tariffs on ‘substantially all’ imports
from the EU during an implementation period. It is this
requirement that has led to the assumption that EPAs
are aimed at opening up ACP economies to subsidised
European exports.
In fact, as explained in this project’s first Briefing Paper,3
a primary objective of EPAs is to make the EU–ACP
trade regime mo