Post-Doha Reorganisation of Global Trade at the Expense of the Global South

This paper places the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the EU and ACP (African, Caribbean, Pacific Group of States) in the context of the international trade and food regime and the EU’s geopolitical strategies, exposing the neoliberal agenda behind these so-called Partnership Agreements. Following a brief illustration of the current state of the EPAs, the hypocrisy behind the development discourse surrounding them is exposed. After a necessarily limited introduction of a series of detrimental effects of the EPAs and the regimes in which they are embedded, the paper focuses on the negative effects of food import and agricultural export dependen- cies for the Global South. The paper concludes with some ideas on alternative ways to organise agricultural systems and the agricultural trade regime in order to ensure the human right to food and to allow policy space for food sovereignty.

The European Union (EU) successfully concluded negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Ecuador in 2014. This occurred despite the country’s long-standing opposition to FTAs and its withdrawal from earlier negotiations with the EU in the context of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN). This article argues that the renewed negotiations can be explained through the EU’s use of its trade power in a process of asymmetrical bargaining with the country following on from Ecuador’s loss of preferential access to the EU’s market under the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP).