South Africa & EPAs
In the Eastern and Southern African region especially, there was a lot of debate in the early days of the negotiations amongst the Members of COMESA and SADC over configuration as a whole and the position of Egypt (as a COMESA member) and South Africa (as a SADC member). The position of Egypt was quite clear – it is not an ACP country, and already had a bilateral agreement with the EU, so was not eligible to take part in EPA negotiations.
The position of South Africa was not as clear. South Africa is an ACP member as it has signed the Cotonou Agreement. South Africa also has a bilateral agreement, the Trade and Development Co-operation Agreement (TDCA) with the EU which covers, among other things, the Free Trade Area in terms of products and rules of origin. Under the TDCA South Africa has undertaken to achieve full liberalisation of 86% of imports from the EU by the end of a transitional period of 12 years.
As the TDCA takes precedence over the Cotonou Agreement it was not clear how other SACU Member States and which are part of one customs territory, these being Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, would be able to negotiate an EPA outside of the TDCA.
In a contribution to the debate, RTFP commissioned a study to assess the likelyimpacts on southern Africa and EU Producers of Further Liberalising the TDCA by Granting South Africa Duty Free Access to the EU Published in 2006 (778.56 Kb).
A second study looked at Foreign Direct Investment in South Africa: the Initial Impact of the TDCA 930.4 KbPublished in 2006
On 12 February 2007, the EU agreed to include South Africa in the SADC EPA negotiating group whilst noting conditions in respect of Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania.