Monday February 5, West African chief negotiators resumed meeting with their European Union counterparts in Brussels, at a critical phase of the negotiations towards the proposed Economic Partnership Agreements EPAs between the EU and ACP regions like ECOWAS.

Top of the agenda of the February meeting is the extension of the deadline for completing the EPA negotiations. The issue of the extension was the major deadlock between senior officials of the two negotiating parties when they met in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso barely two weeks ago.

West Africa had proposed a 3-year extension in line with the decision of ECOWAS Trade Ministers when they met at the end of last November. From the region's standpoint there are too many outstanding tasks, too many unclear issues, expectations and unfulfilled promises for a realistic conclusion of the EPAs by the original deadline of December this year.

 The outstanding tasks required additional time, especially if the EPAs were in any way going to yield their self-proclaimed developmental outcomes.

The request for an extension has been almost universally supported in West Africa and beyond. The negotiators list of what must be achieved has not been contested, even by EU negotiators.

The governments of West Africa have added their voice to the request for flexibility about enforcing the original December 2007, and have explicitly linked this needed flexibility to the prospects for "a viable EPA”.

Civil society in Africa, the rest of the ACP, and in Europe and beyond have welcomed the potential breathing space as offering, at the very least, the theoretical possibility of moving a genuinely pro-development agenda to centre-stage of the Free Trade character of the EPAs so far.

Thus ECOWAS chief negotiators have a comprehensive and incontrovertible mandate. It is this mandate that civil society and trade advocacy groups in West Africa, are publicly calling on ECOWAS" chief negotiators to uphold come February 5.

 “We call on you to stand by the letter and spirit of the decision to secure a 3-year extension of the EPA negotiation deadline, taken at the highest levels of the region, and endorsed by a wide spectrum of citizens.”

“We would like to remind our Chief Negotiators - which includes the Hon Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas, ECOWAS Commission President, Hon. Allan Kyeremanten, Ghana’s Trade Minister - that the region’s citizens share their view that the maintenance of the existing unfeasible EPA timetable puts an inordinate burden on, and undermines any prospect of realising developmental gains in the partnership with Europe. 

The statement was signed by Tetteh Hormeku of the Third World Network-Africa Ghana, Bibiane Mbaye, ENDA-Tiermonde Senegal, and Kingsley Ofei-Nkansah of the Ghana Agricultural Workers Union of the Trades Union Congress.