Book 42


Book 45

This report aims to stimulate a debate on the future of EU trade policy. It was written against a background of continuing uncertainty over a WTO waiver for the EU-ACP Cotonou Convention that would continue liberal access to the European market for ACP exports until 2007. Whilst it may have influenced the resolution of this issue, the immediate short-term objective of the report was to help the ACP prepare for the start of negotiations on a post-Cotonou agreement (scheduled to begin in 2002 for completion by 2007); and in particular to set the agenda by seizing the intellectual high ground in the way that the European Commission was able to do during the final years of Lome IV through the publication of its Green Paper.

No 37

By early 2000, a new trade agreement must be negotiated between the 72 countries of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group and the European Union, to replace Lome IV. This volume features: a commentary on the EU's proposals for the new trade arrangements; an analysis of two "free trade area" agreements which indicate what these proposals could mean for ACP countries; and a series of suggested counter-proposals by the ACP group.