From Africa Recovery, Vol.11#2 (October 1997), Watch page

TRADE
European Parliament defends Lomé Convention against WTO

The European Parliament has urged the European Union to "use all legal means available" to protect the Lomé Convention from the World Trade Organization (WTO), reports Inter Press Service. The current Convention expires in 2000. It is the fourth in a series of accords between 70 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP) and the 15 European Union (EU) countries which give aid and preferential access to European markets.

While negotiations on the future of the Convention, first signed in 1975, will start in September 1998, the WTO has recently ruled that preferential access to EU markets for Caribbean bananas contravenes global rules of free trade. The European Commission, which is the secretariat of the EU, has recently acknowledged that such rulings by the WTO are incompatible with the Lomé Convention.

EUROSTEP, the non-governmental organization, in turn points out that the EU, with the United States, "played a central role" in the Uruguay Round of international trade negotiations which led to the creation of the WTO. According to EUROSTEP, international trade rules are "now widely perceived as detrimental to the poorest and least developed countries."

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