期刊名称：The Journal of International Trade and Diplomacy
印刷版ISSN：1306-1542
出版年度：2008
卷号：2
期号：2
页码：1-25
出版社：Ankara
摘要：This paper explores how the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs)
between the European Union (EU) and the African Caribbean and Pacific
(ACP) States can be made more poverty friendly. EPAs were conceived in
the late 1990s as a means of preserving the ACP states’ favourable
access to the EU market in the face of the opposition of WTO members to
unilateral preferences. Given the GATT-inconsistency of unilateral
preferences, the EPAs were intended to offer preferential access via
GATT’s Article 24, which applies to Free Trade Areas and Customs
Unions. This requires that the preferences cover substantially all trade
between the partners to an agreement, reduce tariffs and other barriers
between them to zero and be reciprocal. In addition the EU intended the
EPAs to include elements of services trade liberalisation, changes to rules
and regulations for trade and commitments about aid. As part of this
process the EU hoped to encourage the ACP countries to integrate more
closely with their regional neighbours by reducing intra-regional trade
barriers and adopting a common policy towards the rest of the world and
the EU in particular. That is, their vision was of the EPAs as regional
rather than national policies pertaining to relations between the EU and a small number of regions with strong intra-regional trade and
integration.
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