EU-Africa trade relations: The political economy of economic partnership agreements

Abstract

For the last five years the European Union has been negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) states. These negotiations, aiming for Free Trade Agreements, are fraught with substantive problems. There is also a looming crisis. In the New Year the WTO waiver for the current shape of EU-ACP preferential trade accords will expire. The EPAs are intended to replace the current trade order, but the negotiations will hardly finish this year. In this paper Peter Draper, Senior Fellow of ECIPE, unfolds the EPA negotiations and sets out a policy case for broad and comprehensive trade agreements to succeed the current preferential arrangement.