The Economic Partnership Agreement and the Building of a Post-Colonial Economy in the Caribbean
| Author | Owen Arthur |
| Pages | 235-247 |
THE ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP
AGREEMENT AND THE BUILDING OF A
POST-COLONIAL ECONOMY IN THE CARIBBEAN
Owen Arthur
17
Text of a speech delivered at/on/where
At the Twelfth Special Meeting of the
Conference of Heads of Government of
the Caribbean Community in Guyana
on December 7, 2007, the leaders of the
Caribbean formally gave a mandate to
the region’s negotiators to conclude a new
and comprehensive Economic Partnership
Agreement with the European Community.
A Draft Economic Partnership Agreement, in
large measure, reflecting in its structure and its
essential terms and conditions, the mandate
agreed to by Heads, was initialled on behalf of
the region on December 16, 2007.
The decision made by Heads of
Government to give a mandate for the
conclusion of a comprehensive Economic
Partnership Agreement with the European
Community, culminated the most complex
and far-reaching process of negotiations,
consultations and dialogue undertaken in this
region, save and except for that associated with
the Federation of the British West Indies.
Everyone involved in the exercise
understood that an EPA with the European
Union would mark a fundamental break with
the past, not just in our relations with Europe,
but even moreso to the status of the Caribbean
economy in the global economic arena.
Everyone also understood that it could
come to herald the beginning of a new kind
of future for the Caribbean, in which new
power relationships and new rules of economic
engagement that are strange and testing for
the Caribbean, would come to play a defining
role in both the Caribbean’s international
economic relations and the internal ordering
of the Caribbean’s economic affairs.
None of the issues that had to be engaged
to reach the stage of concluding an EPA were
easy, and they all involved economic trade-
offs of quite considerable, and often fearsome
proportions.
Some of the decisions had to be made
in the context of contemporary international
trade rules that have severely limited the scope
of manoeuvre of the Caribbean. There were
time frames to be met, and economic and
financial consequences to be evaluated and
faced for not meeting such schedules, that were
all of such significance that they could not be
ignored or dealt with in a cavalier manner.
Decisions, however, had to be made.
Edward Baugh in a poem “View from the
George Headley Stand” captures an aspect of
the Caribbean personality which might help us
appreciate the context within which the EPA is
now being debated in Caribbean circles:
“You see, you see what I tell you,
he playing and missing, I tell you!
No, no, you don’t read the stroke
He knows what he doing, he leaving the ball
alone….
that is what I call a indigenous stroke”.
We do have a great passion in the
Caribbean for seeing the same thing in entirely
different ways. We have an even greater passion
for not being sure as to whether we should play
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