Dionne Rose, Business Reporter

Left: President of Guyana Bharrat Jagdeo. One regional leader who has urged CARIFORUM not to sign the EPA. - File, Right: Jeremy Creswell, British High Commissioner to Jamaica. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

Britain's top diplomat in Jamaica, Jeremy Cresswell, says the UK, like its partners in the European Union, remain firm that the controversial trade pact between the EU and the Caribbean is "balanced and fair" and should be signed as is.

At the same time, Carlo Pettinato, first secretary, European Commission in Kingston told the Financial Gleaner that the EU is prepared to formally initial the agreement in Barbados on September 2, dismissing suggestions the translation problems could cause delays.

Ready

"This agreement is ready, it is available in all European Union languages and this is why the European Union Council of Ministers already authorised the signing," Pettinato said.

"If we didn't have all languages, I think there are 23, there could not be any authorisation of the Council of Ministers to sign," he said.

Negotiators for Caribbean Community (Caricom) member states, as well as the Dominican Republic - collectively called Cariforum - last December concluded talks on the so-called Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), one of six the EU hopes to reach with regional groups that are part of the African Caribbean Pacific (ACP) group of countries.

These trade deals are to replace the former non-reciprocal trade and aid pact the EU had with the ACP.

Caribbean critics

However, in the Caribbean, critics led by a group of highly-respected liberal academicians have rounded on the pact, focusing primarily on two perceived major shortcomings:

The failure of the agreement to provide for bankable transitional development financing for the Caribbean, whose markets will be open to European competition; and

The requirement that the region cannot give more favourable trade treatment to other nations, not even developing countries, than is guaranteed to the EU.

There have been calls for a renegotiation of the pact and at least one regional government, Guyana, has expressed reservations about signing.

Government remains unimpressed

But Cresswell made it clear that Gordon Brown's government remains unimpressed by such contentions, firmly removing Britain, usually the English-speaking Caribbean's strongest supporter in Europe, as a potential ally in any change of mind the region might harbour.

"The position of the British Government and the European Union is that the agreement should be signed as it was negotiated and we hope that this will happen in early September as planned," Cresswell told the Financial Gleaner. "We understand that there are concerns, but we think it is a good agreement, a balanced and a fair one."

The Caribbean academics who have mounted the campaign against the EPA, including former St Lucia Prime Minister Vaughn Lewis, have acknowledged that recanting from the agreement at this stage would be "politically difficult and economically risky"

"Nonetheless, there may still be a window of opportunity as the agreement, though initialled, has not yet been signed," they said in a widely circulated document.

But the clear message for the Europeans is that they are not keen to open that window, although they have stopped short of saying that they would impose sanctions against the Caribbean if the region pulled back from the deal, as is feared by Guyana.

No consensus

At their summit in Antigua in July, Caricom leaders clearly failed to arrive at a consensus on an approach to the signing of the EPA, although their end-of-meeting communiqué suggested that most member states were ready to initial the document.

But this week the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) could not give a head count of how many countries were ready to sign.

"There have been talks of the intent to sign, but we have not in the CRNM conducted a formal survey requesting of people will you sign, or will you not sign just yet," said a spokesperson. "Some countries are still doing their national reviews."

dionne.rose@gleanerjm.com