Ex Ante And Ex Post Evaluation Study Of The Fisheries Partnership Agreement Between The European Union And Greenland

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ISBN 13 : 9789276222972
Total Pages : pages
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Download or read book Ex-post Evaluation of the EPA Between the EU and Its Member States and the CARIFORUM Member States written by and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the final report of the study "Ex-post evaluation of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union and CARIFORUM." The evaluation covers the 10-year period since the EPA has been provisionally applied, namely 2008-2018. With the creation of the Caribbean Community in 1973 the countries of the Caribbean embarked on a process of regional integration. Regional integration, cooperation and engagement were and are the best response to the host of challenges faced by all Caribbean countries. Today these challenges range from the impact of COVID-19 on tourism industries, over regional fragmentation and import dependence, to climate change threatening marine eco-systems or increasing the intensity of hurricanes. The countries do not face these challenges alone, but together with their key partners, the European Union and the US, but also new and emerging partners such as an increasingly active China. Tied together by more than 500 years of shared but also difficult history, as of 2008 the partnership between the Caribbean and Europe is also highlighted by the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union and CARIFORUM. It is a first of its kind agreement, comprehensively covering a wide range of areas beyond the traditional purview of trade agreements. The EPA came out of the realization that traditional trade liberalization alone will not yield strong development impacts, and that a more comprehensive scope and depth is needed. Before the EPA was concluded, CARIFORUM countries received non-reciprocal market access to the EU under the EU-ACP agreements. This market access to the EU was on more favourable terms than for other developing countries, which is not in line with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and this situation could therefore not be sustained. Without a new trade agreement in place, the Caribbean countries would have traded with the EU under the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) regime or Most Favoured Nation (MFN) regime, which would subject the region's most important exports (notably sugar, bananas and rum) to high EU duties. Therefore, the EU and CARIFORUM started the negotiations for a new reciprocal trade agreement in April 2004. In December 2007 the negotiations for the CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) were concluded and the agreement provisionally entered into force on 29 December 2008. As the first comprehensive EPA at the time, it not only covers reciprocal liberalisation of trade in goods, but also trade in services, investment as well as many other aspects (e.g. customs, e-commerce, competition, sustainable development). The comprehensiveness was also based on the insight that many of the traditional as well as emerging industries of the Caribbean - tourism, services, creative industries, among others - do need tailored disciplines. In addition, development co-operation is an integral part of the agreement, seeing that with their often small size Caribbean countries need technical assistance to fully realize their export potential to the EU. The objective of the evaluation is to determine the extent to which the CARIFORUM-EU EPA has been implemented, where the bottlenecks lie and the extent to which the EPA has contributed effectively and efficiently to reach the objectives it set out. In addition, the evaluation examines the relevance of the EPA in relation to current trade and development issues, as well as its coherence with other EU policy instruments affecting the Caribbean. Based on this analysis, the evaluation aimed to capture important lessons learnt and offer recommendations to address some of the challenges and barriers. In terms of geographical scope, the evaluation covers the EPA both from the perspective of the EU and CARIFORUM with regard to its implementation, functioning and use, as well as the overall knowledge and awareness of it. The evaluation of economic, social and environmental impacts, along with the evaluation of development cooperation efforts, focusses on the CARIFORUM countries.