NICOLE MORDANT, Johannesburg | Monday 3.25pm
SOUTH Africa should take quick advantage of opportunities offered by its free trade agreement with the European Union, or face losing out to nations queuing to join the 15-nation bloc, according to a senior EU bureaucrat.
Philip Lowe, director-general for development with the European Commission, told a conference in Johannesburg that the deal, clinched this March and effective next year, is well-timed ahead of the broadening of EU membership.
”Once other countries join the EU, there will be more competition for South Africa and its products,” Lowe said at the close of a two-day meeting to discuss the deal on Friday.
He urged South African businesses to move swiftly to secure customers and markets in the EU, SA’s biggest trading and investment partner. ”Right now, there is great consumer goodwill in Europe to South Africa,” he said. Four tough years of negotiations between the EU and South Africa on dismantling trade barriers finally yielded a deal on March 24 to free up 90% of all trade between the two.
President Thabo Mbeki and officials from all EU member countries are due to officially sign the deal on October 11. The agreement is on track to come into force, as planned, in January 2000.
The EU has begun formal entry talks with Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia and Cyprus. Five other East European hopefuls — Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Lithuania and Latvia — are preparing to join, but at a slower pace.
Foreign ministers from the 15 EU nations, meeting at a Lapp ski resort in northern Finland this weekend, said it is too early to set a strict membership timetable because talks with leading candidates nations were less than half finished. Experts on EU policy believe that realistically it is unlikely there will be any new members for six or seven years. Lowe said new members will not necessarily mean all gloom for SA. New opportunities could be created.– Reuters