PRESS RELEASE
Nairobi
For release on 14th January 2005

EU-ACP TRADE NEGOTIATIONS: NEW THREATS FOR EAST AFRICA

"As Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are implementing the
recently signed Customs Union Protocol, the European Union
is undermining integration between the countries through
trade negotiations which have seen the three countries
split up in two different negotiating blocs", said Jane
Nalunga from Seatini, Uganda, at a conference in Nairobi on
the current trade negotiations between the EU and ACP
countries. At this very moment a series of negotiations on
crucial issues, such as agriculture, industrial goods and
services, are going on - negotiations which will open East
African markets to a flood of European goods and services.

Forty civil society representatives from ten countries in
Eastern and Southern Africa have gathered in Nairobi during
two days to voice their concerns on the negotiations on the
so called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs).

"These agreements are Free Trade Areas being negotiated
between some of the world's richest countries and some of
the poorest, where African countries will be facing huge
government revenue losses through elimination of tariffs,
increased unemployment following collapse of local
industries and threatened livelihoods of millions of small
scale farmers due to competition from increased European
imports", said Ashok Subron from Resistance and
Alternatives, Mauritius.

The civil society representatives are concerned since the
negotiations are threatening genuine regional integration
efforts going on in the Eastern and Southern Africa region.

"These negotiations will lead to trade diversions rather
than trade creation in our region and unfair competition
from European goods, at a crucial time when the Eastern and
Southern African countries - and particularly a country
like Kenya - should be putting the emphasis on developing
and promoting the regional markets instead", said Peter
Aoga from EcoNews Africa, Kenya.

"Ironically as European ministers are traveling all over
Africa, as currently the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer
Gordon Brown, promoting new initiatives for Africa like
Tony Blair's Commission, they have given their mandate to
the EPAs negotiations, which many African ministers have
expressed their worries with. The EU is rushing the EPAs
process with extremely unrealistic time frames, using their
divide and rule negotiating tactic to push through their
own trade and investment agenda - and in this even going
beyond what has been agreed at the World Trade Organisation
(WTO)", said Richard Kamidza from Seatini, Zimbabwe.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Karin Gregow, EcoNews Africa, Tel: 0722-565116