DIVISIONS IN EUROPE OVER RELATIONS WITH THE SOUTH

The Lomé Convention, which has been renewed and revised three times since 1975, has historically symbolised Europe’s ambitions to establish new relations with the South. No more were these to be dominated by economic interests and power politics.

Despite the modesty of its achievements, it is one of the last remaining means for protecting the world’s poor countries from the full force of globalisation.

But not for long.

Europe is preparing to negotiate the fifth Convention, and international finance and trade organisations are insisting that it be brought into line with the rules of the new world economic order.

The Lomé Convention is the most complete and ambitious attempt at engineering a progressive agreement between North and South. As well as providing economic development finance, the European Union agreed to give the countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) privileged access to its markets.

Since the fourth Lomé Convention expires in February 2000, the Fifteen and the ACP will begin negotiations in October 1998 for a new cooperation agreement.

Any post-Lomé arrangement will have to take account of the new world economic order imposed by the 1993 GATT agreement on tariffs and trade, and the creation of the World Trade Organisation. This would imply an ending of the preferential trade policies which had hitherto been the basis of relations between Europe and the ACP.

Furthermore, Africa has seen a lot of changes, and Europe itself is about to reach a turning point, with the introduction of the euro on 1 January 1999 and the start of negotiations to bring in the countries of Eastern Europe.

As far as policy towards Africa is concerned, there is the same Franco-German split in Europe that existed forty years ago at the time when France was redefining its relations with its overseas territories.

France’s Africa policy tends to be mapped increasingly within a broader European context, so that there is clearly much at stake in the precise nature of the "post-Lomé" arrangements.

The position was outlined by Michel Rocard, currently president of the European Parliament’s Overseas Development Committee : "In a period characterised by major regional blocs, Europe and Africa together would provide a considerable counter-presence to combat the over-monolithic power of the United States".

Other member states are not so keen on this notion and suspect Paris of seeking to "get Europe to foot the bill for its ‘renewed cooperation’ with Africa", as one Dutch diplomat put it.

However, the United Kingdom, which drastically reduced its financial contribution under the Lomé Convention in 1995, now seems inclined to greater generosity.

With a Labour government in power, Clare Short, secretary of state for overseas development, sees herself as a standard-bearer for development aid and the fight against world poverty.

And after the short sharp shock administered by the Asian crisis, financial circles in the City are showing increasing interest in the "emerging countries" of sub-Saharan Africa.

For Germany, on the other hand, which is principally concerned with issues of trade and enlargement to the East, and for the Scandinavian countries, which never had colonies and which want to see Europe adopt a "world" cooperation policy, there is no longer any justification for the priority position once accorded to Europe’s African partners.

Such a position in no sense clashes with the current bout of Afro-optimism or the prospects of sub-Saharan markets expanding rapidly over the coming years.

In the view of Germany’s businessmen, even those directly involved in southern Africa, economic liberalisation remains the best guarantee for business in the future - particularly since they have enjoyed scant profits from the juicy African contracts financed by the European Development Fund (EDF), for which Bonn has been the second largest provider of funds after Paris.

The biggest share of the cake was taken by French companies, which ran a quarter of all EDF projects, and they were followed by the Italians.

Yet, Germany and most other European countries share an overriding interest in common : stemming the flow of immigration.

The view is that by making a significant contribution to improved living conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, European cooperation might reduce migratory flows from those countries.

Although Africans account for only 2-3% of the 4 million immigrants currently resident in Germany - the rest being mainly Turks, Iraqis, Iranians and migrants from ex-Yugoslavia - Germany is keen that the next cooperation agreement between Europe and the ACP should contain a section on combating illegal immigration, and a clause whereby African countries will undertake to make repatriation of their nationals easier to achieve.

Losing the banana war

The main country involved in issues of immigration from West Africa is France, and here the French are arguing for "co-development". They want European Community funds in general to be mobilised behind an EU policy geared to training immigrants from the ACP countries and reinserting them into their countries of origin.

This will be one of the "hot" issues in the coming negotiations.

The 1975 creators of the Lomé Convention were in a sense visionaries, but the proposals currently being put forward by the Brussels Commission smack more of "pragmatic realism".

The European Union is thus falling into line with the dogma of globalisation : no hope for Africa unless it adapts to free trade, the laws of the market, and integration into the world economy.

The "specificity" of the European approach would thus consist in the importance accorded to social and political considerations. This means fighting poverty, "encouraging" democratisation and respect for human rights, and a specific concern for environmental issues.

Thus the Fifteen are not in the business of creating alternatives to globalisation : instead they are suggesting modifications aimed at mitigating its worst effects and reconciling the needs of the market with humanitarian values.

The European Union does not aim to rival the Bretton Woods institutions, but to break their monopoly while at the same time strengthening collaboration with them, particularly with the World Bank.

Since the summer of 1996 the two have been holding regular meetings at the highest level, exchanging experts and embarking on joint initiatives in a number of African countries.

There has also been a change in the official line taken by the ACP countries themselves, which up until now have struggled long and hard to preserve their existing advantages.

Several African governments, whether willingly or unwillingly, now seem to be coming round to the globalisation view, arguing that "Africa will only get out of its present condition when it is able to embark on trade with the rest of the world on an equal footing".

Representatives of the private sector are also no longer arguing for the maintenance of Lomé’s preferential trading arrangements.

These arrangements provide free access to European markets for virtually all products deriving from the ACP, but they melted like snow in the sun with the generalised lowering of European tariff duties.

As a result, more than 60% of ACP exports to Europe now have no competitive advantage over their Asian and Latin-American rivals.

Only 7% still have preferential advantage of any real significance.

These include bananas, rum, sugar and beef, of which the ACP continue to export significant quantities to Europe, selling at the same guaranteed prices as those given to European producers.

But these survivals of the colonial relations between Europe and its overseas dependencies are also increasingly threatened by the liberalisation of trade imposed by the World Trade Organisation.

The first blow came in early 1998, when the WTO ruled that Europe’s regulations for importing bananas - a system designed to protect ACP producer countries - constituted an unfair trading practice.

The ruling was a victory for the United States, which had brought the action in the first place, together with four Latin American countries, in defence of the interests of major multinationals such as Chiquita and Dole, which control huge plantations in Latin America.

Europe now finds itself caught between two stools.

On the one hand, it has decided in favour of respecting WTO rulings.

On the other, it has told the ACP countries that it will work for new dispensations so as to extend the existing preferences for a further period.

Faced with this difficult situation, the Brussels Commission seems intent on playing for time, and has proposed a five-year status quo.

"The forthcoming agreement, due to run from 2000 to 2005, will maintain the basic features of the present convention. With some improvements." So says Joao de Deus Pinheiro, European commissioner in charge of relations with the ACP countries.

European cooperation is less and less directed towards the funding of projects. Increasingly, it operates at the macro-economic level and may eventually provide African governments with direct budgetary assistance.

The transition period would be used in order to enable the ACP countries to diversify their production, become more competitive and consolidate integration in their respective regions - as a precondition for their insertion into the world economy.

At the end of this period of grace, Brussels envisages a multi-speed scenario.

Instead of going for one all-embracing accord, the European Union would, early next century, negotiate separate agreements with the various African regional entities - for instance the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and the South African Development Community - as well as with the relevant Caribbean and Pacific countries.

Brussels also suggests that Europe should make allowances for the increasing differences in levels of development in the ACP countries.

The 41 "least developed countries" (LDCs) would continue to enjoy protection.

They would thus become the priority beneficiaries of European development aid.

And the Commission insists that the fight against poverty remains a prime objective.

Thus far European aid has been paid to governments. Henceforth, however, it would be extended to embrace a wider range of recipients, both public and private, with provision also being made for direct support for local initiatives - in other words projects in the informal or popular economy.

It remains to be seen how much money the Fifteen are actually prepared to spend on this.

The discussions are likely to be more hard-fought than ever.

Already, in 1995, France was engaged in a showdown with some of its European partners and was forced to increase its own quota of contributions in order to avoid a cut in the financing of the Lomé Convention.

Moreover, the European Union’s budget will find itself extremely stretched once the countries of Eastern and Central Europe are brought into the fold.

Unlike the LDCs, the 29 "economically advanced" countries of the ACP would no longer have a right to preferential treatment in trade.

Countries such as the Ivory Coast, Mauritius and Botswana would find themselves being invited to negotiate free-trade agreements, which would imply increasing openness of their borders to European exports.

This proposal sounds the death knell for the one-way system which for the past 25 years has permitted the ACP countries to export freely to the markets of Europe while at the same time taxing European imports.

In the view of the Liaison Committee which brings together around 900 European NGOs involved with Africa, the effect would be disastrous : "Globalisation only works between countries which have economies operating at broadly similar levels.

How would Africa’s agricultural and industrial sectors survive in the face of competition from European companies ?

Preferences should be maintained at least until 2010."

For their part, the ACP countries are not demanding protection for all eternity.

But they do want time to consolidate their economic lift-off, which is still fragile, particularly since these countries have been exemplary in their obedience to the harsh dictates of the international financial institutions.

One ACP view is that "the people of Africa are already bearing the full brunt of the shock medicine imposed by the IMF, and have suffered a serious deterioration in their standards of living.

We cannot dive headfirst into globalisation without first completing our programmes of structural adjustment."

Otherwise, it is argued, the social bomb which has hitherto been kept under control would explode.

This is the case that France has been arguing within the European Union.

While Europe remains Africa’s partner of preference, African governments are concerned to benefit from the new interest being shown by the United States.

The president of Mali, Alpha Oumar Konaré, has proposed the holding of a US-African summit in 1999.

In Brussels, satisfaction has been expressed with President Bill Clinton’s African tour, and the multiple comings and goings of North American businessmen in Sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, economic cooperation officials at the Brussels Commission, particularly among the French, like to remind the world that Europe’s publicly-funded aid to Africa is five times higher than Washington’s, and that, unlike the United States, Europe’s markets have long been open to African products and European companies remain the principal source of foreign investments.

Compared with an America which tends to turn every initiative into a media circus, Europe suffers from underdevelopment of its image. Its activities remain deeply misunderstood, or even totally unknown, among the people of Africa.

The reason for this is the Kafkaesque complexity of Europe’s economic cooperation process and the 369 articles of the Lomé Convention.

However, the European Commission has recognised that greater simplicity and transparency are required, and it has taken the initiative by opening the debate on "post-Lomé" to a whole range of non-governmental bodies : heads of companies, trade unions, NGOs and academics, from both Europe and the countries of the ACP.

The EU is also paying the price of its lack of a joint foreign policy.

This was exemplified in the cacophony within the Fifteen over the question of Central Africa.

The Friends of the Congo meeting in Brussels last December, held on the initiative of Washington and the World Bank and designed to free up funds for Kinshasa, was a source of irritation to some.

One top European Commission official commented that "it is not up to Europe to pay in order to further American interests in the Congo", although the same official recognised the risk that Washington might end up sowing division among the Fifteen.

Whatever the position in Europe, it is up to the African countries to come together and ask themselves what kind of relations they wish to develop with their partners.

As regards relations with Europe, at each renegotiation of the Lomé Convention that have left the initiative to the Europeans.

On this occasion, for first time, the "post-Lomé" scenario has been the subject of numerous discussions among the ACP countries themselves, both nationally and regionally. It also brought together a meeting of heads of state in Libreville last November, although at that stage it gave rise to no concrete proposals.

In any event, both Europeans and Africans are in agreement in seeking to give a political dimension to a cooperation process which has hitherto been restricted to economics and development aid.

With the support of France, Portugal has proposed a summit of African and EU heads of state, a major "first", to be held no later than the start of 2000.