Workshop: Economic Partnership Agreements and the WTO

28.07.2005: What’s at stake for the ACP?

Workshop organised by the European StopEPA campaign on 28. July 2005, 13:00 - 15:30 in Geneva

Geneva Peoples Council, World Council of Churches, Salle IV (27.-29. July 2005).

The African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP) are currently engaged in negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA’s) with the European Union (EU). These EPA’s need to be compatible to the negotiations in the World Trade Organisation. However, as these negotiations have not been finalised, it remains to be seen with which WTO Agreements these negotiations need to comply. At the same time, the outcome of the current Doha Development Agenda (DDA) remains uncertain and the question thus arises what is at stake at the WTO negotiations, which have to be completed by the end of this year.
Bearing this in mind, civil society organisations, united in the STOP EPA campaign, propose to organise a meeting on the relation between EPA’s and the WTO, to assess what the different stakes for ACP countries are in the current DDA negotiations. The meeting will systematically look at the different negotiations at the level of the WTO’s DDA and will try to assess the how these negotiations relate to and impact the negotiations in the framework of EPA’s. Subsequently, the meeting will have to address agriculture, NAMA, GATS/TRIPS and RTA’s (GATS article 24).

Proposed Agenda

Opening by ACP ambassador in Geneva (15 minutes)
Session 1: Agriculture (30 minutes)
Session 2: NAMA (30 minutes)
Break (15 minutes)
Session 3: GATS/TRIPS (30 minutes)
Session 4: Alternatives (30 minutes)
Conclusion (5 minutes)