Reporting on the 25th CARIFORUM Council of Ministers’ Meeting
By Elizabeth Morgan
As I had anticipated last week, regional media coverage of the 25th Meeting of Ministers of the Caribbean Forum of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States, known as CARIFORUM, was sparse. The limited coverage mainly came out of St. Lucia, current Chair of CARIFORUM, and venue of the meeting held March 21-22.
CARIFORUM’s membership consist of the Caribbean members of the ACP which are the Member States of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Dominican Republic and Cuba. Cuba is a member of the ACP but is not a signatory to the ACP/EU Cotonou Partnership Agreement (CPA) and the CARIFORUM/EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA). CARIFORUM was organized to facilitate the coordination of the Caribbean’s engagement with the European Union (EU) in the context of the CPA and the EPA, and with the ACP under its Georgetown Agreement.
The press release from the Government of St. Lucia on the convening of the meeting stated that Ministers would be addressing important issues requiring their urgent attention. The Meeting was chaired by the Hon. Bradley Felix, St. Lucia’s Minister of Commerce, Industry, Enterprise Development and Consumer Affairs. The agenda included the following items:
- Brexit and the CARIFORUM/UK roll-over/continuity agreement,
- ACP/EU Post Cotonou Negotiations;
- Implementation of regional funding under the 11th European Development Fund (EDF) programme;
- Implementation of the CARIFORUM/EU EPA;
- CARIFORUM relations with the EU Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) and the French Caribbean Outermost Regions (FCORs) , and
- CARIFORUM Institutions – Caribbean Export Development Agency (CEDA) and Caribbean Regional Information and Translation Institute (CRITI).
On the substantive discussions and actions, I learned from a UK Government press release and a twitter post from Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister, Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, that Jamaica was among eight Caribbean countries which signed the Caribbean/UK continuity agreement with UK Minister of State for Trade Policy, Hon. George Hollingbery, during the meeting. This item was later carried in the Jamaican and other regional newspapers.
There was no reporting on the substantive discussions on any of the other items. Usually at these meetings, Ministers receive and discuss the reports on each agenda item and take the required decisions or give instructions or guidance on specific issues.
On Brexit, it would be expected that as well as the UK/Caribbean Agreement, the Ministers considered the unfolding situation in Britain and the EU. Brexit would be an important issue as the exit of the UK means that in future, the focus will be on relations with the EU27. On the Post Contonou negotiations, Ministers would receive a report on the status of the negotiations and deliberate on the region’s participation and its strategy going forward. It now appears that these negotiations have reached the regional stage as reports indicate that the EU recently met with the Pacific group. It can be anticipated that a meeting with the Caribbean is pending. The Ministers would also consider the status of implementation of EU development support under the 11th EDF from which EUR 346 million was allocated to the region for the period 2014-2020. In the most recent EU budget, it has been proposed that the EDF, established to fund the ACP, be terminated and all aid funding should come from a single allocation.
On the status of implementation of the EPA, Ministers would consider whether it has lived up to expectations and how to expand trade with the EU27 with the UK’s pending departure. The second 5 year review of the EPA should be commencing. Regarding the FCORs and OCTs, CARIFORUM has been working to strengthen dialogue and cooperation with EU territories in the Caribbean. Both CARIFORUM institutions, CEDA and CRITI, have been facing financial constraints and Ministers might have been asked to address the continued financing of these bodies. CEDA plays an important role in trade promotion between CARIFORUM countries and the EU.
So, there were important issues to discuss on the agenda of this Ministerial meeting which concerned trade and development cooperation with a significant development partner, the EU. Yet, this meeting went under the radar generating little media interest. I saw in a statement out of St. Lucia that at the end of the meeting on Friday, March 22, there was a press conference on its outcome, but up to the time of writing, I could find no coverage of this press conference and no press release out of the CARIFORUM Directorate.
I hope that in future there will be better coverage of these meetings so that the public can be informed about relations between CARIFORUM, the wider ACP and the EU given the significant contribution which this relationship has made to regional and national development since 1975.
Submitted by Elizabeth Morgan, Specialist in International Trade Policy and International Politics.