Representatives from the European Union (EU) and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries were meeting in Brussels on Monday morning in a last-ditch effort to save a EU-ACP joint parliamentary assembly.
The 78-member ACP — which groups less developed nations — are angry over a decision by the European Parliament to ban two Zimbabwean delegates from the meeting, and have threatened to boycott the joint assembly.
An EU-ACP executive committee was meeting on Monday ahead of the official opening of the assembly, which was due to run until Thursday.
Nigel Bruce, the opposition Democratic Alliance’s trade representative and a member of the South African delegation, said from Brussels the two sides remained deadlocked.
The impasse revolved around the unilateral nature of decision taken by the European Parliament, and not around support, or otherwise, for the EU’s travel sanctions against Zimbabwe.
”The fight is over the procedure,” he said.
The joint assembly was set to discuss various issues, including the Cotonou aid and trade agreement, that gives the ACP countries preferential trade arrangements.
Bruce said the parliamentary forum was to discuss regional negotiations regarding the Cotonou agreement, and the stalemate, therefore, did not place that agreement in jeopardy.
The European Parliament took a decision last week to ban Zimbabwe’s Minister of State for State Enterprises Paul Mangwana and Deputy Minister for Finance and Economic Development Christopher Kuruneri from its premises.
Zimbabwe’s leaders are restricted from travelling in Europe, but Belgium allowed the ministers to enter the country, arguing the meeting was an international one and therefore beyond EU jurisdiction.
The South African delegation issued a statement on Friday in support of an ACP demand that the two Zimbabwean ministers be allowed to attend.
”The ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly is, as its name indicates, a joint body operating according to rules providing for joint decision making,” the South African MPs said in a statement.
”This includes joint decision making on any proposal to exclude any delegation, or member of a delegation.”
The JPA was a multilateral body implying that the host of any of its meetings had to create conditions for participation by all members of the JPA.
”There is thus a fundamental principle at stake and the South African delegation is strongly opposed to attempts by the European parliamentarians unilaterally to exclude certain members of the
Zimbabwean delegation,” they said.
The EU imposed travel sanctions and froze senior Zimbawean politicians assets in Europe in response to human rights abuses and what it described as a flawed election that saw Robert Mugabe retain the presidency. – Sapa