Declaration and Plan of Action by Caribbean Congress of Labour on the Cariforum EPA adopted at the CCL-ILO Round Table held in Barbados, June 23-25, 2008

Calls for a review of the recently initialled CARIFORUM-EU EPA with a view to its renegotiation to (i) Consider limiting its obligations to the requirements of WTOcompatibility,
(ii) Insert Protocols on productive sectors providing legally binding bilateral cooperation measures, (iii)  Insert legally binding development benchmarks designed to measure the socio-economic impacts of the EPA and (iv) provide for a mandatory review within three years of signature of the agreement, with the possibility of renegotiation…

Click here for CCL Declaration

As posted on the CRNM website

Main Text

Annexes, including Investment & Services

Tariff Schedules

Protocols, including Rules of Origin

Final Act, including Joint Declarations

Link to Annexes on CRNM Website

EPA At A Glance–CRNM

Implementation of the EPA– CRNM

‘The Fork in the Road’

Presentation at ILO/CCL Roundtable, Barbados, June 24, 2008

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Petition launched by the Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC) in June 2008 calling for the renegotiation of the Cariforum-EC Economic Partnership Agreement. The Petition was supported by over 400 signatories.

We the undersigned citizens of countries belonging to the CARIFORUM States (CARICOM plus the Dominican Republic) call on our Governments to renegotiate the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) currently initialed between the European Community and CARIFORUM countries in order to:

1. Limit the EPA only to what is required to make it World Trade Organisation (WTO) compatible;

2. Make specific legally-binding provisions in the EPA for EC financial and technical assistance for developing our industries, agriculture and Services,

3. Insert legally binding criteria designed to measure the socio-economic impacts of the EPA on key segments of our societies - women, youth children, farmers, workers and fisher-folk,

4. Include a mandatory review of the EPA provisions that allows for the possibility of renegotiation; within three years of signature of the agreement.

For full Petition click here

Related documents

Caribbean Congress of Labour Declaration on Renegotiating the EPA

A Declaratory Amendment to the EPA Paves the Way for Guyana to Sign Havelock Brewster

Using the Mandatory Review of the Cariforum EPA Norman Girvan

European Parliament Approves Cariforum EPA With Conditions

Keynote Address at CPDC/FITUN Caribbean Regional Forum, UWI Campus, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, June 12, 2008 (Revised)

From before the EPAs were initialled a great deal of concern had been expressed that ACP countries were being the agreements being negotiated fell far short of the satisfying the Cotonou mandate to support sustainable development and regional integration. The view commonly expressed was that ACP countries were being, in effect, coerced by the EC into signing agreements to meet an artificially imposed deadline; and that these agreements that had much more to do with the EC’s global trade agenda than with the interests of ACP countries...

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Presentation at the CPDC/Oxfam/Christian Aid Consultation on the Cariforum-EC Economic Partnership Agreement, St. Augustine, Trinidad, June 12, 2008

Lessons of the EPA PPT

Note prepared for general circulation in response to the steep increase in world food prices, June 2, 2008.

A good illustration of the anti-development bias of the EPA is its treatment of the food security issue. The extraordinary rise in food prices over the last couple of years has given a new prominence and urgency to this problem in the Caribbean, where as Tony Weis pointed out in a recent Diaspora Column, “food security is so utterly wedded to global markets and heretofore cheap breadbasket imports”...

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