OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 10.00am.
MINISTER of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin says South Africa will not let itself be bullied into accepting the controversial wine and spirits agreement with the European Union, which again hangs in the balance in spite of a final agreement reached last month.
One of the agreement’s contentious issues deals with the phasing out of the use of the names port and sherry a year earlier than initially agreed. Although SA and EU teams struck a deal during a teleconference on 9 June, there were material differences between the terms of the final agreement reached during the teleconference and the text received from the EU two weeks later.
The EU has said it is not prepared to address these, telling South African negotiators that they would endanger the implementation of the agreement scheduled for 1 September should they insist on having the differences rectified. “It looks as if the EU is acting in bad faith here,” a source said.
“The changes introduced by the EU after 9 June are unacceptable to us. These affect the essence of the agreement and cannot be resolved in a technical manner at a later stage,” Erwin said.
The EU informed South Africa a week ago that there were “technical problems” regarding the implementation of the agreement on 1 September. South Africa was not concerned about this at first, but further details revealed that the problem was much more serious than initially realised.
“The EU is once again attempting to violate South Africa’s multilateral rights. The terms of the agreement reached on 9 June were a pragmatic response to this problem. The EU’s agricultural pressure groups cannot continue to try and enforce their complex laws on all agreements,” Erwin said.