The Future of Africa's Trade with Europe: 'New' EU Trade Policy.

Trade with Europe is currently more important for the African continent, and nearly every single country in it, than any other international economic links. Africa's future trade relationship with the European Union (EU) is now being decided in negotiations which are provoking intense debate, and to understand what is at issy it is necessary to locate these negotiations in the contact of the EU's wider trade policy. This policy was recently reiterated in a more coherent and focused form in the European Commission's 4EC's) October 2006 proposal for a new trade strategy. This paper seeks to review the main elements of this 'new' strategy before looking at how it impacts on the EU's approach to the negotiations for 'Economic Partnership Agreements' (EPAs) with four groupings of African countries. It closes by reviewing what this will probably mean for the Africa-EU trade relationship in the future in the context of the major trends in the current processes of negotiations. The Link Between International Policy Successes & Trade Policy. In its broad headlines the new EC trade strategy appears as an unrestrained call for liberalisation. Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson claims that the core message is a simple one: 'rejection of protectionism at home, activism in opening markets abroad'. This latter dimension is seen as particularly important since as the Commissioner argues: 'if our economic strength is built on trade, then our prosperity is directly linked to the openness of the markets we try to sell to. Yet this unadulterated liberalisation agenda is not as clear cut as it at first appears. It needs to be seen in the context of 15 years of efforts to structurally transform major sectors of the European economy in order to equip them to engage more effectively with a rapidly expanding and changing global economy. The completion of the EU internal market, and one might add the process of reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), is increasingly providing this effective platform for the EU to engage with the global economy, not in a head-to-head confrontation with emerging low-cost producers in the developing world, but in (hose particular components of the market which Europe is seen to be particularly well equipped to serve. The EC working document notes that: European manufacturing industry has broadly maintained its share of GDP in volume in the faced of globalization (and that this good performance is mainly due to the ability of EU companies to sell products at premium price due to quality, branding and related services.