Business

David Jessop, Contributor

It is unlikely that you have ever heard of Christofer Fjellner from Finland, or Peter Sratsny from Slovakia. It is, however, possible that you may know of José Bové, the environmental campaigner who rose to fame in France when in protest, he destroyed a McDonald's burger restaurant.

More likely, a few persons may know of Louis Michel, the former European development commissioner, or Robert Sturdy, who has previously supported the Caribbean's sugar industry.

What these individuals, plus 11 more and four substitutes, have in common is that they are all members of the European Parliament and have been named formally as the members of the Joint EU-Cariforum Parliamentary Committee, an institution of the EU-Cariforum Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and a body which appears to parallel the work of the existing ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly.

What is happening is that Europe, and one has to assume the Caribbean, has begun to establish, with very little fanfare, the bodies that will govern the EPA and manage its implementation.

As early as last November, the European Council (EC) published a decision calling for expressions of interest from appropriate bodies wishing to be involved in the EU-Cariforum consultative committee - the body that will advise ministers and officials on the EPA.

This will be a committee of 40 standing members representing organisations from civil society of which 25 will represent organisations located in Cariforum states, and 15 from organisations located in the EU in categories that include 'social and economic partners', the academic community, and 'non-governmental organisations, including development and environmental organisations'.

The final decision on membership of this body will come down to officials meeting as the Cariforum-EC Trade and Development Committee, who will also agree a list of observers proposed by Cariforum states and the EC.

The European Economic and Social Committee, or ECOSOC, is, according to the EU document, to serve as the secretariat of the committee

Then, this June, the EU and Cariforum agreed the rules of procedure for the Joint Council of Ministers, the body that will govern all EPA decisions.

When Caribbean heads of government attended the EU-LAC summit in Madrid in June, the inaugural meeting of the Joint Cariforum-EU Council took place.

At the meeting, senior figures from the EU and the EC adopted a framework of rules for the conduct of the key bodies that will take all binding EPA-related decisions, including the Joint Cariforum-EU Council of ministers, the Cariforum-EU Trade and Development Committee, special committees set up under the EPA, and rules of procedure for dispute settlement, and a code of conduct for EPA arbitrators and mediators.

The meeting also endorsed the proposal that Senator Maxine McClean, Barbados' minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade, would serve as Cariforum's 'High Representative' to the European Commission until December 2011.

Despite all these arrangements for governance, structure, and one assumes, the accompanying bureaucracy initially paid for on the Caribbean side by Britain, very little is happening on the ground, most important with the only group actually able to make the EPA work - the private sector.

In some respects it almost seems as if the EPA belongs to another age and way of thinking.

The underlying belief that growth brought about through freer trade and regional integration, all delivered by a private sector enabled by government, seems to have faded since the EPA was signed in 2008 and the world and the Caribbean were plunged into recession.

Because of this, the early high-level criticism and complaints about the absence of almost any new money beyond that already programmed for the region, there is now a widespread cynicism about the EPA, in much of Caribbean society, including within the private sector.

Many challenges

The financial crisis has also brought into sharp relief the numerous challenges the Caribbean faced prior to the signing of the EPA so that most are now focused less on the benefits that trade liberalisation might bring and more on the day-to-day problems of managing businesses that face difficult trading conditions.

This has not been helped by uncertainty about the overall value of trade agreements, as the few remaining preferential arrangements the region has have been eroded by the signing of association agreements between the EC and competitor nations in Central American and Andean nations, and will be by negotiations now restarting with Mercosur.

More important, however, beyond these perceptual problems there are many practical difficulties that have to be overcome if the regional private sector is ever to take advantage of the opportunities the EPA presents.

Most.,businesses in the... Caribbean are not export-ready in relation to international markets.

The only exception is the Dominican Republic, where the public and private sector have been much more open to trade agreements and the advantages they offer. But even there, campaigns are under way to encourage awareness of EPA opportunities.

Fragmentation is also evident in the business-support organisations in the region that might be able to promote some of the capacity- building support that may become available under the EPA.

Although there are strong sectoral organisations relating to rum, tourism, poultry, sugar and bananas, and the services coalitions in a number of nations are demonstrating real vibrancy, for the most part, business is represented by a multitude of small, poorly resourced bodies that often lack the financial and human capacity to deliver useful services to their members.

Cooperation between such organisations seems patchy, finances are limited, and it appears that an attempt to establish a Caribbean Business Council as an organ of Caricom through the Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce has been taken off the table.

If the EPA is ever to benefit the region, Europe and Cariforum and the array of new bodies that have been created should concentrate on finding ways to address the cynicism about the agreement's value, demonstrate its purpose in practical terms, encourage creativity in thinking about the opportunities the EPA might offer, and establish a central role in any such outreach by developing business-support organisations in the region.

Without this, the EPA will have a structure, but in practical terms be dead in the water.

David Jessop is director of the Caribbean Council. Email david.jessop@caribbean-council.org.