ACP to EU…
– Minister Rodrigues delivers report
THE African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Ministerial Council has expressed anxiety for the European Union (EU) to engage in “prior consultation” before making any new marketing arrangements to avoid any “bitter” development in this export commodity.

The call came at Tuesday’s meeting (May 26) of the ACP Council in Brussels that received a report on the recent 11th Special ACP Ministerial Conference on Sugar held in Georgetown, Guyana, from May 17-21.

Reporting on the Georgetown meeting in the absence of the ACP’s spokesperson on sugar from Mauritius, Guyana’s Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodrigues, pointed to required adjustments from the EU’s current sugar regime reform program to the implementation process of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiated, or being negotiated, with ACP countries.

The overall aim in this “period of adjustments”, as noted by the ACP ministerial conference, must be to ensure that the “transition is managed to avoid market disturbances and pressure on prices” in the EU sugar market against the benchmark of the reference prices”.

The ACP Ministers feel that with six years remaining for the current EU sugar reform regime that ends in 2015, the existing Sugar Consultative Group should coordinate with the European Commission (executive arm of the EU) the creation of an appropriate “alert system” to facilitate timely exchange of information on sugar exports.

Another major concern, as expressed by the ACP ministers, is the extent to which the prevailing global economic and financial crisis could negatively impact on funding by the EU for the successful implementation of the Sugar Protocol in relation to the multi-annual adaptation strategies (MASS).

They stressed that the Sugar Protocol Accompanying Measures (SPAM) had been established by the EU primarily to assist ACP member states to become competitive in the face of various challenges to Europe’s market in the post-reform period.

The ministers were, therefore, concerned that provisions of the ‘Cotonou Accord were being expediently referenced to withhold legitimate funding from member countries of the ACP.

As noted by Foreign Minister Rodrigues in delivering the report from last week’s ACP Conference in Georgetown, “in several instances funding appeared to have been delayed because of the introduction of undue administrative burdens and conditionalities (by the EC) as well as, in some cases, the absence of an EU delegation in some countries.

The overall thrust of the report resulting from the ACP Ministerial Conference in Georgetown, was to ensure no “bitter” developments in ACP’s sugar exports during the transition from the EU’s reform regime to implementation of negotiated EPAs.