come’
On the other side of the coin, some South African producers were facing insurmountable barriers to entry into the EU market. Davies has tried to highlight the case of the Langeberg fruit-canners in the Western Cape as a case in point. Most of their products remained on the agricultural exclusion list and attracted duties of about 25%, which would probably go down to about 18% when the EU implemented its Uruguay obligations.
Davies said this was based on fears that the canners would ”flood” the European market, putting many competitors there out of business. This overlooked the fact that South African canners faced severe land and water restrictions and their growth potential was limited. They also did not measure up to the quality and price requirements of the EU market.
These issues affected not only South Africa, but also its neighbours in the Southern African Development Community — a point South Africa has been trying to bring home to the EU with mixed success.
”A lot of lobbying work needs to be done in Europe,” Davies said.
”We need to be pushing for consistency between principles and actual positions and the beef dumping issue is not a very good omen.”
Davies said that it was important, however, that as part of the Lome Convention, South Africa would be party to discussions on the future shape and direction of the accord.
The EU had produced a green paper pinpointing several options on the way forward but Davies said it signalled ”a fairly radical and drastic change from the pattern of Lome IV”.
Chief among these was an enhanced relationship with the least developed countries and a move towards a reciprocal arrangement for the rest.
Davies cautioned against this approach, which appeared to be mainly motivated by the fact that the ACP countries’ share of EU imports had been declining and that reciprocity would be vital to compel ACP states to subject themselves to the discipline of the global market and increase their competitiveness.
”Such a view is based on a rather simplistic and one-dimensional view of the requirements for the successful integration of developing countries into the world economy,” he said.
While it could be agreed that a combination of macro-economic stability, opening up of domestic markets and the development of supply capacity were needed, this would vary in degree and intensity from country to country.
Davies said developing countries were already subject to the discipline of their Uruguay round obligations [of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the precursor to the World Trade Organisation] and many were subject to structural adjustment programmes.
”It is not immediately obvious that subjecting them to the further disciplines of, and adjustments by, a reciprocal agreement will be beneficial,” he said.
The EU Green Paper had not attempted to analyse or explain why the ACP states’ share of the EU market had not reached expectations and it was not clear whether the aim was to move to reciprocity by withdrawing preferences.
It also had to be borne in mind that negotiating reciprocal trade arrangements required ”enormous negotiating effort” that not all developing countries could necessarily cope with.
”It is strain on our capacity but what about countries with lesser capacity?” Davies asked.