{"id":615,"date":"2018-08-10T14:40:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-10T14:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefreezoneblog.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/10\/eu-africa-free-trade-will-create-more\/"},"modified":"2018-08-10T14:40:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T14:40:00","slug":"eu-africa-free-trade-will-create-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thefreezonechannel.com\/old\/eu-africa-free-trade-will-create-more\/","title":{"rendered":"EU-Africa free trade will create more imbalances, say critics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n<\/a><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nGermany’s development minister has sparked a debate by
\ncalling for EU tariffs to be waived on African goods. Critics question
\nwhether import duties are really the issue, or are there other barriers
\nto trade? <\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n
\nThe European Union can boost development to and stem migrant flows
\nfrom Africa by completely opening its market to the region, German
\nDevelopment Minister Gerd M\u00fcller said on Wednesday.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n“Open the market for all African goods,” M\u00fcller told Die Welt<\/i> newspaper, adding that the European market is effectively closed to Africa at present.<\/div>\n
\nBrussels has the power to “give the continent a new status \u2014 also politically,” he said.<\/div>\n
\nAt
\n the European level, M\u00fcller wants to see the introduction of an Africa
\nCommissioner who will connect the numerous threads that make up the EU’s
\n Africa policy. He also called for an EU-Africa Council to meet
\nregularly.<\/div>\n
\nBut above all, his call is about trade,
\nwhere agricultural products from Africa are free to be imported into the
\n EU duty and quota-free.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nM\u00fcller,
\n who is a politician for the Christian Social Union \u2014 the Bavarian
\nsister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats \u2014 said he
\n would work towards the creation of a new EU-Africa treaty in the two
\nyears leading up to Germany’s presidency of the EU’s executive body, the
\n European Council, in 2020.<\/div>\n
\nEach EU state assumes a six-month rotating presidency of the Council and Germany’s turn will run from July to December 2020.<\/div>\n
\nCriticized for little action<\/b><\/div>\n
\nBut within hours of the ideas being made public, they were rounded upon by his political opponents, and labeled a “smokescreen.”<\/div>\n
\nThe
\n chairman of the Bundestag’s Committee for Economic Cooperation, Olaf in
\n der Beek, of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), said
\nM\u00fcller “must stop talking and start acting,” in an apparent sign of
\nimpatience at the speed of German-led plans to help boost Africa’s
\neconomy, which he said had been mooted for three years.<\/div>\n
\nThe Green
\n party’s spokesman for development policy, Uwe Kekeritz, questioned why
\nM\u00fcller was backing a free trade plan for Africa, when previously he
\nbacked the EU’s Economic Partnership Agreements, which prevented such a
\nmarket opening. The agreements created the intention to reduce trade
\ntariffs on both sides, but have hit many roadblocks.<\/div>\n
\nRoland S\u00fcss of the anti-globalization group Attac told the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)<\/i> it would be difficult to achieve free trade between two continents that are so unequal.<\/div>\n
\nHe
\n said many African states have reduced their tariffs on foreign goods \u2014
\nin some cases by up to 90 percent \u2014 which has just opened the
\nfloodgates to low-cost European products, many of which are heavily
\nsubsidized by the EU.<\/div>\n
\nAfrica not benefitting<\/b><\/div>\n
\n“Subsidized
\n agricultural products from Europe are flooding African markets and
\ndestroying local smallholder structures,” S\u00fcss told FAZ<\/i>.<\/div>\n
\nThe
\n EU forecasts that its agricultural subsidies will total \u20ac365 billion
\n($423 billion) between 2021 and 2027, while Brussels’ entire
\nEuropean-Africa policy is worth just \u20ac39 billion a year.<\/div>\n
\nSuss’s
\nresponse was backed up by Sahra Wagenknecht from the left-wing Linke
\nParty, who agreed that the agriculture sectors at home and in Africa
\nwere suffering due to the EU-Africa trade deals.<\/div>\n
\n“Instead of more
\n free trade to create more reasons for migrants to leave, we finally
\nneed to stop plundering Africa’s raw materials,” she said, adding that
\n“fair trade” was a more appropriate term.<\/div>\n
\n <\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nFall in imports from Africa<\/b><\/div>\n
\nDespite
\n duty-free imports (apart from arms and ammunition) already being in
\nplace from the 32 poorest countries in Africa and the 12 countries with
\nwhich the EU has Economic Partnership Agreements, EU imports from Africa
\n have fallen by almost 40 percent in recent years, according to the
\nGerman development minister.<\/div>\n
\nM\u00fcller believes it is not so much a
\nproblem of tariffs and import quotas, but other obstacles that make
\nmarket access so difficult for African companies. In many cases, they
\nproduce goods that do not meet strict European quality standards, for
\nexample foodstuffs, he said.<\/div>\n
\nEuropean Parliament politician Elmar
\n Brok of the CDU agrees that it is crucial to help African companies to
\nmeet the corresponding import conditions into the EU.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n“Fair and
\ngood trading conditions are key to achieving better living standards in
\nAfrica. And such measures also ensure less migration,” he told German
\npublic broadcaster ARD on Thursday<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Germany’s development minister has sparked a debate by calling for EU tariffs to be waived on African goods. Critics question whether import duties are really the issue, or are there other barriers to trade? The European Union can boost development to and stem migrant flows from Africa by completely opening its market to the region, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[129],"class_list":["post-615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-free-trade","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"yoast_head":"\nEU-Africa free trade will create more imbalances, say critics - The Freezone Channel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thefreezonechannel.com\/old\/eu-africa-free-trade-will-create-more\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"EU-Africa free trade will create more imbalances, say critics - The Freezone Channel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Germany’s development minister has sparked a debate by calling for EU tariffs to be waived on African goods. 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