EPAs, ASEAN and TiSA: Requirements for trade policy reform from a development perspective
In the new publication, Thomas Fritz explores a side of EU trade policy that has so far not been highlighted in the discussion on CETA and TTIP: The development dimension of European trade policy. The EU conducts the vast majority of its negotiations on trade and investment agreements with countries in the Global South, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
As the present study shows, the current trade and investment policy is diametrically opposed to the EU's development commitments.
Not only could the forced liberalizations in these countries have far more devastating consequences than in industrialized countries such as Canada or the USA, but in many other aspects the trade agreements promote poverty, dependence and environmental destruction around the Global South.
The publication initially focuses more on the economic partnership agreements.As in a fuel glass, the key development policy deficits of European trade policy can be analysed here. Subsequently, the focus will be on Southeast Asia and the current EU negotiations with individual countries of the ASEAN Group, including the relatively advanced talks with Vietnam.
The analysis then proceeds to the plurilateral level, where the EU is proving to be the driving force behind the negotiations for the TiSA service agreement, in which a number of Latin American states are also involved. The significant blind spots in development policy in this trade agreement have so far hardly caught the eye of a wider public. Finally, the executive summary makes a number of recommendations for a developmentally responsible and sustainable reform of EU trade policy.
