One-sided partnerships
WORKERS, FEB 2007 ISSUE
A new TUC report, EPAs: A Threat to Workers, outlines Economic Partnership Agreements being negotiated between the European Union and six regional groupings of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. The report strongly criticises EU external policy for trying to impose liberalisation on those ACP countries.
The report describes how developing country governments could be forced to open markets to imports from the EU, and to privatise essential public services, such as water, health, and education. Vulnerable farmers and producers in some of the world's poorest countries will then be pitted against those in the richest EU countries. Industries and producers unable to compete with EU imports face devastation, with a massive impact on wages and jobs. The report gives examples of how economic liberalisation damages ACP countries and their workers. The International Monetary Fund imposes economic conditions before giving loans or the World Trade Organization sets trade rules. Local industries, including manufacturing and food processing, have collapsed in Zambia, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana among other countries.
Things are little better where workers keep their jobs. For example, normal working hours in footwear factories in South Africa have increased since free trade policies were adopted. Jobs that were once permanent have become casual. Many developing countries have had to accept the principle of creating Economic Processing Zones where labour standards are deliberately waived to attract foreign investment, meaning few benefits actually reach the people. Tetteh Hormeku, of the Africa Trade Network, summed up this situation: "If EPAs carry through, African countries will have to kiss goodbye to their industrialisation efforts."
This report clearly shows how in its external relations the EU serves the interests of the capitalist class, although the TUC doesn't put it like that. And the EU's internal relations are just as destructive for the working class in its own states – which the TUC certainly doesn't put like that.