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EU in Southern Africa
Posted by Daniel Makhura on 11 July 2017 9:20 AM SAST
An agreement strengthening regional integration in Southern Africa.
Improving the Southern African Customs Union: Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South-Africa and Swaziland form together the Southern African Customs Union, the oldest existing customs union in the world. A customs union’s principal characteristic is a common external tariff for imports. In the case of imports from the EU, however, the SACU members today do not all impose the same duty. In other words, the union is not functioning in an optimal way.
The SADC EPA now harmonises the SACU tariffs imposed on imports originating in the EU and consequently improves the functioning of the customs union - an objective that all participants wanted to achieve. In this way, the SADC EPA strengthens regional integration.
More intra-regional preferences: But the SADC EPA does more for regional integration. Each SADC EPA state has agreed that any advantage it has granted to the EU shall also be extended to the other SADC EPA states.
An agreement good also for the EU
Re-anchoring EU-Africa trade relation: Africa is a rising continent. African countries are climbing up the “Doing Business” rankings. New businesses are emerging and African countries are becoming less dependent on commodities. The EPA is one of the instruments that can help EU business benefit from this new African energy and potential. EPAs can be essential in re-anchoring the trade bonds between Africa and the EU.
Better access to the market The EU already has a Trade, Development, and Cooperation Agreement with South Africa since 2000. In exchange for more market openings provided to South Africa, the preferential access to the South African market that the EU enjoys today will now be extended to include agricultural products such as wheat, barley, cheese and pork. The Southern African Customs Union as a whole will align itself to this market access regime.
Protection of geographical indications: More than 250 traditional product names – so called geographical indications or GIs - from the EU and more than 100 South African GIs will be protected. This means for instance that a producer in a country other than South Africa cannot market a tea processed from a plant from its own territory under the symbolically important name Rooibos. The same applies to EU traditional product names.
Full respect of WTO rules: The EU’s trade policy towards the SADC EPA region will now be fully in line with WTO rules. A solid and fully respected rules-based trading system is of crucial importance for the EU – a major international trader.
