THE Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries could receive substantial compensation for any losses incurred as a result of the proposed Free Trade Agreement between the EU and South Africa, the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, said in Windhoek, Namibia, yesterday.
"Although there is nothing concrete on the table, the question of compensation for the SADC countries affected by the Free Trade agreement will undoubtedly arise," Mr Spring, President of the EU Council of Foreign Ministers, told The Irish Times at the end of the two-day EU-SADC meeting in Windhoek.
At a private lunch between the SADC and EU ministers, the SADC countries raised their concerns about the impact of, the Free Trade Agreement on their economies. The Southern African Customs Union countries, (SACU) had raised the issue of significant fiscal losses resulting from the probable reduction in customs payments from, South Africa after the agreement is implemented.
But Mr Spring made it clear that it was not in the EU's interests to establish an agreement with South Africa which was not also good for the SADC states.
"We will have to cut the cloth so that it is beneficial for South Africa and beneficial for SADC," Mr Spring said. "Substantial adjustments will have to be made to the proposed agreement," he said. These adjustments, he noted, would inevitably include the issue of compensation.
"Some SADC countries were not aware that serious discussions had yet to begin with South Africa," Mr Spring said. "South Africa still has to respond to the EU negotiating offer. And South Africa's own internal discussions about the agreement are bound to include talks with SADC partners where the issue of compensation is bound to occur."
The SADC co-chairnan, Mozambique's Foreign Minister, Mr Leonardo Simao, said that SADC would demand to be associated with the negotiating process for the South African agreement from the start.
"We are in the process of creating a free trade area within SADC," he said. "So how can one country negotiate a separate free trade agreement with a third party?"
Earlier Mr Spring, opening the conference, said southern Africa should look to Europe, which had already demonstrated the crucial role of economic integration in increasing trade and prosperity.
As several African states called on the EU to foster partnerships of trade, not aid, with the SADC countries, Mr Spring, co-chairman of the meeting, urged SADC to use Ireland's experience in Europe as an example of regional co-operation and economic integration at its best.
It was becoming clear that no country, however big, could achieve its own growth or employment targets through mere national policy measures, said the European Commissioner for Development, Mr Joao de Deus Pinheiro, who also addressed the conference.
In this context, the EU welcomed the recent signing, of the SADC trade protocol, which also envisages the establishment of a free trade area in eight years, as a step in the economic development of the region.