Editorial | Breaking CARICOM’s logjam

Three years ago when, at their intersessional summit in Belize, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) endorsed a proposal allowing members to move ahead with initiatives on which the community is broadly agreed, this newspaper suggested that this could be among the community’s most consequential decisions in its half-century of existence.

The arrangement provided for a workaround to CARICOM’s notorious ‘implementation deficit’ for coalitions of the willing, once the interests of other members weren’t compromised. The community could therefore begin to clear the logjam of failures that impeded its move to being a genuine single market and economy.

The Gleaner not only reiterates those sentiments, but welcomes CARICOM’s first project under this formalised multi-track regime – the decision by Barbados, Belize, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines to implement fully between themselves, the free movement of their citizens. Hopefully, nothing will happen to delay or derail this initiative.

What this means is that Barbadians, Belizeans, Dominicans and Vincentians will have the right to reside in each other’s countries, without the need for residency or work permits. They will have the right to establish businesses and move capital; the right to emergency and primary healthcare provided by the respective governments; and their children will have the right to access public primary and secondary education.

A case might be made that those member-states that were ready to proceed with initiatives could, even within the framework of the CARICOM treaty, always have found a way around the principle of unanimity, by which the community generally operates.

What, however, the community has now done through its so-called enhanced cooperation protocol is to codify, and formalise, the basis upon which the multi-track regime will run.

VARIABLE GEOMETRY

Revived in 2020 by the Avinash Persaud Commission that made suggestions for reviving CARICOM’s spluttering economies, the multi-track arrangement resembles the European Union’s (EU) “variable geometry” mechanism. It allows CARICOM members to proceed with initiatives in the absence of unanimity, once at least three members sign onto the project and there is approval by no less than two-thirds of members.

However, the rights and obligations created under any such initiative are binding only on the countries, and nationals of those countries, that are signatories to the scheme. Other states can accede to the project at later dates.

Importantly, though, nothing agreed by members that proceed under the enhanced cooperation regime, should undermine CARICOM’s overarching objectives, leading discrimination against non-participating states.

In that regard, CARICOM’s existing arrangement allowing community citizens in a range of prescribed professions or skills to live and work throughout the community once they receive a CARICOM skills certificate, remains in place. Indeed, the programme was expanded at last week’s heads of government summit in Montego Bay with the addition of categories of aviation professionals to the list of people who will now enjoy this scheme’s limited form of free movement.

The more advanced free movement initiative between the quartet that was announced in Montego Bay, is not without precedent among some CARICOM members, even if not specifically under the umbrella of the community. The seven full members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) – all of which, including Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines, are members of CARICOM – have for many years allowed fully free movement of their citizens within the group. That arrangement hasn’t sunk any part of the OECS.

Notably, St Vincent and the Grenadines (US$11,160) and Dominica (US$9,870) are, on the basis of of their per capita GDP, as estimated by the International monetary Fund (IMF) are substantially poorer than some of their OECS counterparts, such as Antigua and Barbuda (US$22,630) and St Kitts and Nevis (US$21,910).

NOT THE ONLY CRITERIA

Of course, per capita GDP is not the only criteria by which to judge a country’s capacity to manage the potential influx of residents. Antigua and Barbuda, which has a large percentage of foreigners, including CARICOM nationals, among its residents, has, for instance, argued that it would not be able to manage the probable social and infrastructural strain that might be expected by allowing fully free movement of labour.

Such arguments notwithstanding, along with the free movement of capital, the right of labour to traverse the region unhindered, is sine qua non for the establishment of a single market and economy, which is what the CARICOM treaty declares the community’s mission to be. At Montego Bay, CARICOM’s current chairman, Jamaica’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, conceded that the “pace of scope of implementation” of the single market and economy regime “was just too slow”.

The leaders, Mr Holness said, had pledged to do “everything in our power” to accelerate the process.

In a global environment where small countries already have little protection, existing insulations are being rapidly eroded in the unstructured disintegration of the existing world order. Which makes CARICOM and regional integration, the laminated nature of their cover, regardless, even more logical.

Domestic concerns over the potential loss of sovereignty, as well as fears of economic impacts, cause some CARICOM members to move slowly on integration, even when, intellectually, they embrace the value of conglomeration.

A multi-track CARICOM, enhanced cooperation, is therefore a useful mechanism. For, as the Persaud Commission said: “Getting change going is important in itself. Change begets change … {s}ome (initiatives) could work in a phased manner, if a critical number of countries set off first in an advanced party. There are initiatives, for instance, that some would join but only if others, more enthusiastically, have shown that it works first.”