This was made clear by Ambassador Amos Tincani, head of the EU delegation to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, as he addressed the workshop on Promoting Creative Industries: A Trade and Investment Strategy for the Caribbean organised by the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM)
last Wednesday.

"EPA negotiations are 'the only show in town'. There is no prospect for an FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas], regional or bilateral with CARICOM; and the WTO [World Trade Organisation] Doha Development Round is stalled for the time being," he said at Grand Barbados Beach Resort, St Michael.

"The EPA negotiations are entering a crucial phase, so inevitably the politics will become more difficult. Time also is short. Our deadline to negotiate EPAs is January 2008, when the Cotonou waiver under the World Trade Organisation expires.

"We should not flaunt the deadline, but equally we have no magic alternatives to offer; it is politically unrealistic to think that WTO members would agree to extend the current waiver, and certainly not without a hefty price.

"But the key reason for moving quickly is not this; it is because the world is moving on and preferences are eroding – eroding permanently. It does the region no favours to cling to the past," he said. (CH)