Issued by: Department of Foreign Affairs
22 June 2000
The Deputy Minister of Minerals and Energy, Ms. Susan Shabangu, will sign South Africa’s Protocol to the Cotonou Convention, in the Benin capital tomorrow, Friday, 23rd June 2000. The Convention is the new Partnership Agreement between the seventy-seven member African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of states and the fifteen member European Community (EC). The Cotonou Convention, replaces the four previous Lome Conventions, which structured ACP-EC trade, development and broader relations since 1975.
The Fourth Lome Convention (Lome IV), expired at the end of February this year, while the year and a half-long negotiations for a successor arrangement between the ACP and the EC was reaching finality.
The Convention is geared to tackle poverty within the ACP states, by establishing effective ACP-EC political dialogue, development support and trade and broader economic cooperation. It is particularly concerned to reverse the trend towards economic, technological and social marginalisation of the ACP states specifically endeavouring to stimulate regional integration among the ACP states and their better involvement in globalisation trends. The Convention strives to enhance ACP-EC adherence to the accepted international principles of respect for human rights, the rule of law, good governance and democratic processes and practices.
Its uniqueness is also evident in the ways in which it seeks to involve civil society, the private sector and organised labour in viable partnership projects. These non-state partners participation in the Convention’s implementation, is regarded as key to its wider success, legitimacy and transparency. They are being informed and consulted in the choice of ACP-EC cooperation projects. Similarly, gender equality and environmental sustainability is targeted in all new ACP-EC cooperation processes.
This new twenty-year ACP-EC Convention, will be reviewed every five years.
It also has a new five-year, EUR 13.5 billion development resource window the European Development Fund (EDF). The EDF is designed to be applied to achieve more balanced macroeconomic fundamentals, along with expanded private entrepreneurship and social service delivery. New ACP-EC partnerships will be forged, to replace the previous trade preferences granted to the ACP states by the EC. These new arrangements will remove tariff barriers reciprocally and progressively, with the aim of attracting investment.
While the present (Lome) arrangements are to be maintained during a preparatory period of eight years (until 2008), formal negotiations are to begin in September 2002, on new economic partnership agreements, which will enter into force by 2008 at the latest. The ACP participants will then start to liberalise their trade over a transitional period of at least twelve years. South Africa joined the Lome Convention in June 1998 as a qualified member.
This meant it was essentially excluded from the trade regime of the Lome Convention, as well as its provisions on development assistance (aid).
However, South Africans could tender for projects in all ACP countries, financed from the 8th EDF, which was valued at some EUR 12 billion.
Moreover, South Africa could participate fully in the political institutions of the Convention :
a.. the ACP-EC Council of Ministers, which manages the Convention at the governmental level and is the ultimate decision-making body;
b.. the ACP-EC Committee of Ambassadors, based in Brussels, which monitors ACP-EC cooperation and has certain delegated powers; and
c.. the ACP-EC Joint Assembly.
South Africa’s accession to the Lome Convention was similarly governed by a special Protocol, specifying the terms and conditions of its membership. Its accession to the new Cotonou Convention will likewise be in accordance with a Protocol defining its qualified status. Its position will be basically unchanged. It will remain excluded from most of the trade and aid provisions of the new Convention, but benefit in its own ways in these same areas, via the implementation of the SA-EC Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement (TDCA) - signed last October. South Africa will also participate fully in the overall political dialogue and the joint ACP-EC institutions. South Africa will, furthermore, be involved in the discussions between the EC and the ACP on future economic partnership agreements. South Africans will also be eligible for the award of contracts in ACP countries, funded from the new EDF resources allocated under the Cotonou Convention. However, they will not enjoy the preferences accorded to ACP citizens.
For enquiries contact Ronnie Mamoepa
Cell no. 082 9904853