Jun 25
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
Jun 25
Declaration calling for a four-point renegotiation of the EPA and the establishment of mechanisms to guarantee that the EPA and other trade agreements are supportive of the Tripartite Declaration and Plan of Action for Realizing the Decent Work Agenda in the Caribbean.
Jun 24
‘The Fork in the Road’
Presentation at ILO/CCL Roundtable, Barbados, June 24, 2008
Click here for PowerPoint Presentation
Jun 15
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.
For full Petition click here
Jun 12
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...
Click here for full address
Jun 12
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
Jun 02
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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