The Third World Network (TWN) Africa, an international advocacy group, says the interim Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) signed between Ghana and the European Union is very dangerous. It said contrary to government's claim that the agreement was 'a stepping stone,' it was "in fact a quick-sand agreement with government trapped into dangerous commitments, most of them unnecessary". It said, "The agreement commits Ghana to liberalize an overwhelming proportion of its imports from the EU even as there is not clear basis for deciding how and which sectors of the economy will perform under this situation." The Head of Programmes of TWN, Tetteh Hormeku made these comments at a press conference in reaction to the signed agreement in Accra on Friday. He said the agreement had committed the government to an approach to the issues that remained to be negotiated at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) level. "By initialing such agreement, the government has signaled an intention to move in a direction which is negative to the overall interest of Ghana, both nationally and within the West African region," he said. According to Mr Hormeku, "by the terms of the agreement, government committed itself to a schedule by which different tariffs on products are imported from Europe". He said what government had done was only to serve the parochial interest of a few people who exported to the European market without considermg the interest of the majority who exported to other countries not in Europe. Thus the Ghana govern¬ment has committed itself to promoting negotiation of the very issues within West Africa which it has itself rejected. The position of the government on these issues, he said, not only jeopardised the role of the country in the region, it also undermined its own future negotiating position on issues which it had itself said were dangerous for its right and ability to define its own policies on investment in accordance with the needs of domestic investors and the economy as a whole. "Not only are commitments in this area not necessary for the proclaimed purposes of the interim agreement that is, the need to avoid trade disruption come January 2008; more importantly, ACP governments, including Ghana, differ from the EU's demand for a dispute settlement procedure based on trade sanctions. In the interim agreement, the Ghana government accepted the EU's view where the agreement will be enforced through trade sanctions. "The only concession being that the tautology that aid (which is never part of trade any way) shall be exclud¬ed when EC applies trade sanctions." Such an approach to dispute settlement and trade issues, according to Hormeku, was imbalanced - in that, Ghana has limited ability, if any, to apply such sanctions on the European Union. "More importantly, the dis¬pute settlement mechanism has been discussed in the context of its application to the full EPA, including those sections like investment and others which have not been agreed yet. The Government has thus put itself in a position of accepting the punishment of the crime even before the crime is defined, thus undermining its future negotiating positions." Source: Daily Guide