ISDS Case Map
EU
European Union
The European Union is considering ''deeper'' free trade area (FTA) discussions with Asean members that would cover political issues sensitive for some Asean governments: labour rights, environment legislation, competition policy, transparency in government procurement, and liberalisation in services.
A day after Caricom chairman Baldwin Spencer proposed September 8 for the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU) the Observer has learnt that the pact is now unlikely to be signed before either September 12 or September 19.
The Third World Network (TWN) has said that it will continue to mount pressure on the government and policy makers for them to withdraw from signing a non-preferential economic partnership with the European Union (EU).
This paper critically assesses the compatibility of the CARIFORUM-EC EPA with the
proposed CARICOM Single Market and Economy--CSME. The main conclusion is that the CSME, a project for the creation/strengthening of the regional economy for engagement with globalisation,
will be superseded by the EPA, which involves a high degree of bilateral integration of
individual Cariforum countries with Europe in trade, investment and regulatory
policies.
Top negotiators of South Korea and the European Union (EU) will meet in Seoul next week to seek progress in their free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations by tackling sensitive issues, the Korea herald reported Thursday.
Barbados Prime Minister David Thompson has called for an urgent meeting of the CARICOM heads of government ahead of the scheduled September 2 signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement.
The EU is currently negotiating FTAs with Central America, the Andean Community of Nations and Mercosur. Its objective is to use these agreements to complete the privatisation process, to remove restrictions on European property and activity in the region, to acquire full access to natural resources and to obtain guarantees that European companies will be able to operate with clear advantages over national companies. Moreover, all these concessions granted to European companies are to be protected from any political changes that the peoples of the region might want to undertake in the future.
Gulf oil producers have criticised the European Union (EU) for delaying the signing of a landmark free trade agreement (FTA) that could support their long-standing bid to diversify their oil-reliant economies.
Mr. Gyekye Tanoh, an official of the Third World Network (TWN), a civil society organization, on Wednesday blamed delays in the Economic Partnership Agreements process on the European Union (EU) saying they were manipulating the negotiation process to suit them.
It will be critical in the coming months to mobilise resistance to the implementation of the Interim EPA in its current format and thereby strengthen the Namibian Government's hand not to sign a final EPA with the EU. Namibia should also link up with African and international campaigns against EPAs, which have emerged in the past few years. The battle is not lost but there is little time left to prevent EPAs from becoming a new and powerful tool to promote EU interests at the expense of Africa's development needs. A new publication from the Labour Resource and Research Institute (LaRRI).
