Post Lome WTO-compatible Trading Arrangements

This report aims to stimulate a debate on the future of EU trade policy. It was written against a background of continuing uncertainty over a WTO waiver for the EU-ACP Cotonou Convention that would continue liberal access to the European market for ACP exports until 2007. Whilst it may have influenced the resolution of this issue, the immediate short-term objective of the report was to help the ACP prepare for the start of negotiations on a post-Cotonou agreement (scheduled to begin in 2002 for completion by 2007); and in particular to set the agenda by seizing the intellectual high ground in the way that the European Commission was able to do during the final years of Lome IV through the publication of its Green Paper.