Guyana joins ACP-EU Council in search of Cotonou successor

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, June 1, 2018

Vice President and Foreign Minister, the Honourable Carl Greenidge, today in Togo joined counterparts of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) and from the European Union (EU) for the forty-third session of the ACP-EU Joint Council to further discuss post-Cotonou negotiations.

Talks focussed primarily on challenges of diversity, among others, and explored a number of areas, including a joint ACP-EU declaration on climate change and migration.

For his part, Minister Greenidge intervened on a number of issues of significance to the ACP, including the fifteenth Joint Ministerial Trade Committee, which met in Brussels, Belgium in 2017, as well as the problems of middle-income states and instruments that would be of use to assist them.

With the Cotonou Agreement set to expire in 2020, the organisation is looking towards post-Cotonou negotiations, which will be led and guided by a Central Negotiating Group (CNG). Guyana and Jamaica will represent the Caribbean region on this body. Minister Greenidge is deputy to the Chief Negotiator. The Honourable Minister first served as a member of the Negotiating Troika for Lomé III in 1983 when he was Minister of Finance of Guyana.

The 79 ACP Member States have agreed to a draft negotiating mandate as a collective group and to seek a legally-binding arrangement with the EU that builds on the current Agreement. The new agreement is expected to take account of the issues of middle income countries, small island developing states (SIDS), least developed countries and landlocked developing countries (LLDCs).

Meanwhile, earlier in the week, the Honourable Minister led a team to Lomé, Togo for the 107^th Session of (ACP) Council of Ministers held from 28 to 30 May. During the session, the ACP Group examined means to both revitalise the organization as well as its relations with the European Union (EU).

In 1975, the Georgetown Agreement, aptly named for being signed in Guyana’s capital, gave birth to the ACP Group, which brought countries from three distinct regions together to focus on trade, cultural cooperation and socio-economic development, among other common interests. Presently, the ACP Group is looking to amend the founding agreement to better equip the organization to engage with other countries and bodies in the international arena.

Concurrently, in 1975, the ACP entered into a trade and aid partnership with the EU under the Lomé Convention, which replaced by the Cotonou Agreement in 2000.