The EU-ACP Sustainability Impact Assessment

The SIA involved developing a methodology, undertaking case studies in key sectors throughout the ACP, and undertaking extensive consultation with negotiators, experts, and relevant stakeholders in civil society in the EU and in the ACP regions.

Trade is not an end in itself, but rather a tool for sustainable development.

Trade is not an end in itself, but rather an essential tool contributing to sustainable development. The European Union is committed to understanding the impacts of its trade agreements on economic, environmental and social sustainability and seeks to ensure that its trading relationships promote, rather than detract from, efforts to pursue sustainable development.

EU-ACP SIA aims to assess the economic, environmental and social impacts of trade.

This is why the European Union (EU) is undertaking a Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIAs) of Economic Partnership Agreements to identify the economic, environmental and social impacts of trade negotiations in order to integrate these issues into the agreements currently being negotiated between the EU and the ACP regions.

The objectives of the EU-ACP SIA

The SIA aims to encourage trade that promotes economic, social and environmental sustainability.

The ultimate objective of the EU-ACP SIA programme is to help ensure that trade between the EU and the ACP Group of countries supports economic, social and environmental sustainability. Fundamental to the EU-ACP SIA is the premise that strengthened regional integration in the ACP can be a tool for achieving sustainability.

The SIA should help ensure that the EPA negotiations take sustainable development into account.

The specific goals of the EU-ACP SIA are to:

Enhance the analytical awareness and understanding of the negotiators of the links between trade liberalisation (and the EPAs in particular) and sustainability to ensure that the EPA negotiations take sustainable development fully into account.
Contribute to research and policy efforts related to the EPA negotiations and to encourage negotiators to adopt positions that will promote sustainability in the EU and in the countries of the ACP.
Help define, and provide input into, policy packages being developed by the EU and by the countries of the ACP to accompany EPAs to ensure that the outcome of the negotiations contributes to sustainable development.
Increase transparency by developing a basis for the discussion with European and ACP stakeholders about sustainability implications associated with the negotiations.

The SIA process

The SIA involved a four-year process in parallel with the ACP-EU trade negotiations.

The EU-ACP SIA was undertaken in parallel with the EPA trade negotiations, between December 2002 and December 2006. The SIA team employed a framework methodology developed in the first phase of the SIA to undertake six sector studies on a range of issues, one in each of the ACP regional negotiating configurations:

Horticulture in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA)
Rules of origin in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Group
Financial services in Central Africa
Agro-industry in Western Africa
Tourism services in the Caribbean
Fisheries in the Pacific

Stakeholder participation was an important element of the SIA process.

An important element of the SIA was public participation throughout the process to disseminate information, raise awareness, increase transparency, and ensure that the work is relevant and responds to the major concerns of stakeholders. This involved the development of a sustained dialogue with stakeholders, in a range of fora, about issues related to sustainability and the EPAs. Stakeholders were involved through various means: electronic mechanisms such as a dedicated Internet website or electronic discussion groups; stakeholder workshops in the EU and ACP regions to present and discuss the preliminary findings of the SIA. Over the four-year period, the SIA consortium made presentations at more that 30 meetings bringing together a broad range of stakeholders including trade negotiators and experts as well as representatives from private sector, trade unions or non-governmental organisations (NGO) in the EU and across the ACP.