Possibilidades de renovação da cooperação ACP-UE no período pós-2000

Abstract

The interest in discussing relations between the countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) and the European Union (EU) gained special relevance with the publication, in November 1996, of the Green Paper (Green Paper) of the European Commission. It discusses what the future of the ACP-EU partnership should be, in the context of the Lome IV Convention. This gives ACP nations a preferential trade regime, and on the basis of non-reciprocity in trade with the EU. In the meantime, the EU argues that the trade regime in force in the Lomé Convention has eroded, given the conclusion of the Uruguay Round and the subsequent entry into force of the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). There is an incompatibility between Lomé and WTO principles, such as that of the most favored nation. Therefore, Lomé IV, which expires in 2000, has to be replaced with a new configuration in the ACP-EU partnership. This study analyzes the different scenarios of the possibility of renewing the Lomé Convention, considering the various factors that will have determined and influenced o changes in relations between the ACP and the EU, in the more than 20 years of the Lomé Convention. The analysis of factors that possibly contributed to a radical revision of ACP-EU relations, under Lomé conventions, aims to predict changes in the partnership between the two groups, to identify possible implications of these changes and to make recommendations for the future. This proves to be important, so much so that, in the current context of the globalization of world economies, the ACP have to find room for maneuver to formulate their own development policies and integrate themselves in international trade competitiveness.