• Intensified and expanded political dialogue;

• Simplified, more flexible development cooperation;

• A new, more balanced approach to economic partnership laying particular stress on the potential arising from regional integration.

1. When EU-ACP Ministers last met - in Barbados in May - Prime Minister Owen Arthur welcomed delegates with words that must resonate in this inauguration of the negotiation process for post-Lomé IV arrangements. I quote:

"In a global context, the Lomé body of relationships represents still the most effective, the most meaningful model of North-South arrangements ever conceived by man." He went on, "To some that may not be saying much given the dearth of rivals but in a world which has little to be proud of in relation to sustained development cooperation between nations and across hemispheres, it is indeed saying a very great deal. In a changing world, in a world of liberalisation and globalisation, in a new world of drastic new trade rules and disciplines, Lomé too will and must change. But the soul of Lomé must not be lost, must not be cast adrift and must not be abandoned to wander on some mistaken shore."

I repeat those sentiments here on behalf of the entire ACP. They represent the philosophy of our Libreville Declaration of 1997 and the guiding principles that have inspired the ACP’s negotiating mandate on which we have just agreed.

2. Twenty-five years ago a European Economic Community of nine and forty-six countries of the developing world sat down together here in Brussels to explore a mutual ambition for furthering development through partnership. It was a new time, and new relationships called for bold approaches. From those discussions came the Lomé Convention which broke new ground in many respects and was to survive through renewal and refreshment to this day as the most effective body of North-South arrangements in the post-war era. The Community was to grow into the Union of fifteen and the ACP was to emerge and to grow into a family of seventy-one.

3. Of course, there have been disappointments in realising the goals of the Convention in full measure; and the faults of omission and commission that marked the progress of Lomé through the last quarter of this century have been on all sides. But those deficiencies have never been so large as to question the value of the journey itself. As

we enter into discussions once more at another time that is new, so new indeed that it represents a shift of eras, let us be positive about the past and ambitious for the future. The question that will engage us over coming years is not whether to go on together but how to revitalise our partnership for development.

4. And we shall go forward strengthened in the enlargement of the Lomé family while adhering to its basic geographic coverage. The European Union will grow to perhaps 26 by the turn of the century and we look to the enrichment of the ACP family with the inclusion of Cuba and of enlargement of the Pacific group. As we enter the new millennium the ACP-EU partners could themselves have grown to over a hundred. - more than half the world’s countries. That prospect of growth imposes a particular responsibility on us to succeed in developing the architecture of Lomé appropriate to the 21^st Century. Not only in the interest of the EU and the ACP, but in the wider interests of building towards global solidarity, there must be no question of ‘losing Lomé’. Such considerations inspired the ACP’s Libreville Declaration which I reaffirm here as the embodiment of our guiding principles.

5. That purpose of building towards global solidarity is noble in itself; but it is of great practical significance as well. Globalisation and liberalisation have given human interdependence a harsher image. Just a few days ago [23 Sept.- IT 24 Sept.] the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve. Board, Alan Greenspan , commented in widely anticipated testimony on the current economic crisis: With few signs that the financial crisis that started in Asia last year has subsided, or is about to do so, policy-makers around the world have to be especially sensitive to the deepening signs of global distress, which can impact their own economies. Those ‘deepening signs of global distress’ are all too familiar to ACP countries. Their global impact alone, to say nothing of their moral imperative, is cause for genuine partnership within the Lomé aspiration.

6. But we need not have waited for the crisis to arrive. In September 1995 my own Prime Minister had this to say in London:

"The confluence of the special economic and political events of the past decade, and those which are already looming on the horizon, have heralded and will create such a dramatic change in the conduct and ordering of global affairs as to require fundamental and far-reaching changes in all societies, great and small.

7. Last year’s Trade and Development Report from UNCTAD had itself warned in unequivocal terms that financial instability constituted the single most important impediment to attaining steady and rapid growth - with modern financial markets organised less to create wealth and employment than to extract gain by buying and selling ‘second-hand assets’. Our negotiations must not ignore these realities nor their underlying causes. With the fires of a global financial crisis raging all around us we cannot bury our heads in the proverbial sand .

8. More than half of the ACP states are among the world’s poorest countries - 39 out of 48 : 81 per cent.. These are the Least Developed Countries, in the language of Lomé, the LDCs -language that means nothing unless spelt out in images of human misery. Yet these images now increasingly bring on in rich countries complaints of fatigue, of one kind or another .But those disparities are at the heart of the Lomé reality. We cannot together be too tired to confront them. In these negotiations we must be tireless in our confrontation of them.

9. This Century has seen a great flowering of human genius, an explosion of human prosperity. But it has shown also a perverse genius for worsening the human condition of billions of people, and, particularly now, as the Century draws to a close, an escalation of human insecurity. In 1900, as another generation looked with hope to the 20^th Century the ratio of average income of the richest country in the world to that of the poorest was 9 to 1; bad enough , but within catching distance. Today, as we dare to look with hope to the 21^st Century, that ratio has risen to 60 to 1. As we have seen, many of these poorest countries live - if it can be called living - under the Lomé roof.. The contradictions are staggering to the point of being grotesque. The annual payment per cow under the EU’s livestock subsidy is greater that the EDF ‘s annual allocation per person to the ACP.

10. We have to understand this fundamental reality of inequality as we embark on these discussions for post-Lomé arrangements. In our relationships, there is no such thing as a ‘level playing field’; however much the EU likes to employ that image in aid of your assertions of ‘fairness’ . It must be understood from the beginning that the ACP will demand the reality of ‘fairness’ in these negotiations and in the arrangements they produce.

11. We have heard a good deal about ‘differentiation’ in the last year as we prepared for today, and the ACP acknowledges its reality among ACP countries and the need to respond to it in all we do hereafter. The present Convention already acknowledges the need for special treatment of differentiated categories among us, such as the Least Developed and others. It would be prudent in the negotiations to examine these provisions in order to ensure that such needs are adequately met. The Group specifically proposes that additionally allowance be made for states exhibiting characteristics of low income; extreme commodity dependence; acute indebtedness; or vulnerability.

12. Hurricane Georges last week underlined such special needs in its devastation of several ACP countries in the Caribbean. Not so long ago, Papua New Guinea reeled under a similar onslaught of nature. And in recent years many an African country has had its economy laid low by droughts of extraordinary severity.

13. But this is about differentiation between ACP countries. We have not heard as much about ‘differentiation’ as a factor in relations between the ACP and the EU; yet it is the most basic reality with which we shall have to contend. The people of the ACP countries know of these realities of differentiation between rich and poor in the world. They cannot accept post-Lomé arrangements which proceed on any other assumption.

14. This reality has direct implications for matters we shall have to discuss - like arrangements that govern trade relations between us. Whatever the doctrinal and other arguments about ‘free trade ‘ and ‘open markets’ you must not expect the ACP to abandon its basic position of principle (for which it has argued strenuously and consistently from the initial Lomé negotiations) that as between unequal players what equity requires is not reciprocity but proportionality - a system which makes the partners less, not more, unequal. It was to become an essential element of successive Lomé Conventions. In a development cooperation agreement this ancient ethical principle should need no reinforcement; for it remains valid despite the current emphasis on global trade liberalisation.

15. The ACP regards trade as an important pillar on which incomes, employment and growth can be constructed. Access to the EU market has therefore always been the centre-piece of Lomé. Preferential access in this context is intended not to be a right available in perpetuity but rather a means of giving the ACP states breathing space to grow, develop technical capacity and to raise their levels of competitiveness so as to take advantage of market access. In other words, it has a developmental dimension which is crucial.

16. We feel that preferences still play an important role in developing ACP trade with, and outside of, the EU but obviously it has to be complemented by adequate resources for diversification support, for supply-enhanced factors such as investment in infrastructure and quality control, as well as the attenuation of restrictions on ACP exports. The latter restrictions relate to rules of origin, technical restrictions to trade and phytosanitary measures.

17. Preferential access is an important means of fostering the growth of ACP economies. The system of non-reciprocal trade preferences should be broadened, increased and maintained for a sufficiently long period to prevent any disruptive effects on ACP economies. Under this scenario, and in view of other EU commitments and obligations, the ACP will be proposing core product groups in which there should be a standstill to enable the ACP countries to develop the necessary production capacity and competitiveness. This approach would be complementary to ACP pursuit of free and unlimited access.

18. Given the continuing heavy dependence on EU markets and a few commodities, the ACP needs to give urgent priority to diversification, not only into commodities with higher value added but also processed foods and agro-industrial products. For this purpose, the Convention should provide for a special action programme to interest EU firms to invest in PMDT activities in ACP countries- processing, marketing, distribution and transport.

19. Discussion of trade liberalisation frequently tends to ignore the fact that in reality whilst removal of trade barriers may be desirable as an ultimate goal, that is not all there is to the expansion of trade. In fact, even as trade barriers have been brought down, non-trade barriers (NTBs) and other restrictions have become more prevalent.

20. In the past, the EU has not always taken advantage of the enlargement of the Union to facilitate the ACP’s need for buoyant market opportunities. We believe, for example, that the planned absorption of the CEE states in the EU with an additional 120 million consumers is an opportunity to meet some of these problems. We are apprehensive, of course, that the enlargement of the EU could pose risks as well, as the EU looks inwards in an effort to address imbalances. We hope that the Union will be sensitive and creative in ensuring that our legitimate concerns are taken into account.

21. Current economic doctrine may point to longer term objectives of free trade among partners ; but it can only do so with validity when ‘free trade’ becomes synonymous with ‘fair trade’. It is not so now; nor will it be in the year 2000. So long as the players are greatly unequal with economic power and resilience preponderantly on one side, those whose economies are weak and fragile, whose people are poor and vulnerable, become not empowered but endangered by unqualified reciprocity. For ACP countries this must imply a fundamental interest in the renewal, at least for the foreseeable future, of the basic non-reciprocal character of the Lomé partnership.

22. Unequal partners certainly cannot be expected to offer to EU countries free and unrestricted access to their markets and impoverished economies, particularly where that reciprocal treatment has no counterpart in free access of labour..Quite apart from other considerations, to do so would be to make an otherwise unreciprocated concession of the most major proportions. - requiring compensatory measures, transition periods (both generally and specific to sectors), and financial and other assistance to strengthen domestic capacity to sustain such arrangements.

23. And there are other reasons why ‘regional’ FTAs, or economic arrangements akin to them, present the ACP with threshold problems of great magnitude. This is not the ‘regionalisation’ of which the ACP spoke in the Libreville Declaration. These references relate to the factor of ‘regionalism’ in ACP development and the aspiration to strengthen regional integration in particular. At the same time, the Heads of State and Government at the Libreville Summit stressed that solidarity should be a fundamental principle of the ACP, and that this should be reflected in the new Convention. Regionalisation must not be used as a cloak for splitting up the ACP. The ACP did not forge its unity only to negotiate its division into three or perhaps even six parts. A Europe that has succeeded so well in the strengthening of its own integration should be the last to seek to take the ACP down the road of disintegration. We will not be induced to impair our solidarity by siren voices whose unsung melody is the old one of division.

24. Let me affirm that principle of ACP solidarity from the outset of our discussions. The ACP’s negotiating position will be founded in the Libreville Declaration, the negotiating mandate filling out the intent of the Declaration taken as a whole. The principle of ACP solidarity is the fundamental principle of the Declaration and it will inform all that the ACP does in the negotiations. It must be remembered that ‘ACP ‘in not just a convenient way of describing the Group of developing country members of the Lomé Convention; It has organisational and institutional significance beyond the Convention - as the recent meeting of ACP Foreign Ministers last week demonstrated.. It would be imprudent for the EU to believe that ACP solidarity will prove illusory - or try to make it so. It is a mistake Europe has made before - and which admittedly our own behaviour sometimes encourages; but it is a mistake nonetheless.

25. In this context, the ACP has noted the modifications that have been made in the final form of the EU’s negotiating mandate opening up the option of ‘a new framework for trade ... which is equivalent to the (ACP’s) existing situation under the Lomé Convention and in conformity with WTO rules ... making use of the differentiation permitted by WTO rules’. Exploring the full potential of such a framework for developing what can truly be called an ‘enhanced Lomé’ may be a central challenge of the future.

26. But whatever path the ACP decides to pursue in the negotiation of its future trade relations with Europe, it is clear that a rollover of the existing Convention is necessary. The negotiating process itself will be a lengthy one; but that is not the ACP’s only consideration. The time frame must allow ACP countries to prepare adequately for alternative arrangements, to develop new export activities and to deepen their integration into the global economy, Realistically, that must be longer than the five years currently being contemplated by Europe.

27. The negotiation of any trade regime under post-Lomé arrangements will be overlaid by the notion of ‘WTO compatibility’; but it is important to keep this matter in perspective.. The WTO is not the master but the servant of human welfare. Developing countries, ACP countries among them, helped to create the WTO especially to bring under the rule of law those powerful economies that have historically asserted a right to play not by the rules but by power. But the WTO shows signs of being not a sensitive arbiter of fairness but a rod of oppression - increasingly in the hands of the strong. The process of restoring it to its true mission began at the First Ministerial meeting in December 1996 in Singapore where developing countries, including many ACP countries, had to assert the limits to WTO interventionism. That assertion was as strong in Geneva last May. The WTO itself acknowledges that its rules are not written on tablets of stone. Lomé negotiations must not be conducted as if they were. To begin with decisions for change already taken must be implemented. But beyond that, the ACP calls for the application of WTO rules on a basis of flexibility that would make them compatible with the basic objectives of development. If not, the rules themselves will have to be revisited. This is an area in which joint action by the EU and the ACP can render a global service.

28. In like manner these negotiations must look to arrangements that will protect individual ACP countries or regions exposed to economic instability resulting from the operation of liberalised financial markets.. Given the importance attached to private investment by both the EU and the ACP and the necessity to maintain macro-economic stability as a stimulus to increased investment flows, this is a matter vital to the long run development prospects of ACP countries.

29. We are all agreed that investment is one aspect of cooperation which could benefit from more careful scrutiny, more extensive dialogue and more systematic implementation. The EU is the major investor in ACP states as a whole; but the level of this investment needs to be channelled into areas consistent with prudent trade policies. For example, investment needs to complement trade and industrial policies of ACP countries in support of diversification and trade infrastructure. EU Governments can facilitate the achievement of this goal.

30. In the Libreville Declaration, ACP Heads of State and Government, while recognising that investment is a vital engine of growth and development, committed themselves to pursuing macro-economic policies and reforms that create an environment conducive to encouraging domestic savings and investment and attracting foreign direct investment.

31. To support these efforts, they called on the EU to provide the necessary resources and give incentives to their private sector to ensure that investment is directed to ACP countries, especially by guaranteeing foreign investment. They also called for the establishment of an ACP-EU Business Forum whose objective would be to promote ACP-EU investment and cooperation in the field of business. We should pursue this in the negotiations.

32. Of course, the standardisation of the fiscal and related framework of the EU member states should be undertaken with an eye to ACP needs. We are not satisfied that any attention is currently being paid to this aspect. The unfolding EU regime may therefore unnecessarily handicap or discourage prospective investors wishing to undertake projects in ACP states.

33. But regarding investment, recent research suggests that one of the greatest barriers to EU investment in the ACP may be ignorance. Even ACP states which objectively have been deemed attractive in terms of investment opportunities and economic climate, find themselves attracting too little investment. It appears that the problem is unavailability of sufficient information to potential investors. Since this is a plight affecting many ACP states (in Africa in particular), it would appear that the time has come for us to implement the Joint Declaration, contained in Annex LIII of the existing Lomé Convention. This calls for the ACP-EU Contracting Parties to study and agree on the main clauses of a model protection agreement with a view to facilitating the negotiation of bilateral agreements on investment promotion and protection on the one hand, and to setting up guarantee systems which might give a positive answer to the specific needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on insuring their investments in ACP states. On the other hand, this would be one way of ensuring that the numerous investment protection agreements and investment guarantees signed between ACP and EU states yield fruit.

34. I can say without fear of contradiction that both the ACP and the EU are agreed that guaranteeing the protection of investment would be an important and effective means of encouraging inward investment in ACP states. The same applies to dispute settlement and I would add that dispute settlement should take due account of circumstances in ACP states.

35. The importance of the private sector lies not only in its contribution to production; it lies also in the flexibility it extends to an economy’s capacity to react to challenges in the fast-moving global economy through the mobilization of individual initiative. In consultation with our private sectors, we propose that the new Convention be structured so as to permit a clear sighting of the windows of opportunity available to the private sector. One way of meeting this need would be a Chapter specifically dedicated to the private sector.

36. Secondly, we believe that the private sector should be permitted direct and easier access to financial resources which are allocated to that sector. Wherever there is acceptable and transparent representation of the private sector, it should be given leave to manage those funds in conjunction with the relevant state agency if necessary. For this purpose, the ACP will be proposing that consideration be given to assigning resources to the ACP regional development banks and the EIB. The latter could perform the role of manager within a framework to be worked out by the ACP and the EU. Finally, specific support should also be provided in the successor agreement for national and regional private sector organisations.

37. I believe that both the ACP and the EU are likely to agree on the need to foster the participation of agents of the civil society in the management of our ACP societies. The ACP is prepared to work for a Convention which places some resources at the disposal of this group in the framework of the National Indicative Programmes and all-ACP regional cooperation funds and which makes provision for their participation in decision-making at a number of levels - all-ACP, regional and national - where this is appropriate. There are needs to be satisfied about representativeness, the matter of governance and the appropriate division of labour: but these can be settled before-hand. The ACP looks forward to a mutually agreed proposal which will, in many senses, crown an extended period of support from and collaboration with civil society.

38. This is a respect in which the architecture of post-Lomé arrangements has to be creatively relevant to the new realities of the global economy and sufficiently imaginative to influence that economic environment. Another is the attention those arrangements must give to the new areas of international economic activity such as trade in services, intellectual property and investment. Although the existing Convention has given attention to services that support economic development, it has concentrated on tourism, transportation, communications and information technology. There is need for meaningful progress in these existing areas; but there is need also for a broadening out into new services sectors of importance to the ACP, like entertainment and sports which will constitute important export thrusts in the future. And in such new areas it should not be beyond our collective skill, or will, to look for an early harvest in these areas, taking account of our competitive advantage.

39. But new areas apart, it is in sustaining and strengthening existing arrangements that have demonstrated their capacity to make important contributions, and their potential to do even better, that the negotiations must make a significant impact on development. When it is remembered that STABEX has contributed significant resources toward the stabilisation of export earnings of ACP countries - and that most of this has gone to the poorest countries - the case for maintaining what is best in Lomé should be irrefutable. So too the Commodity Protocols under which - for example, in the case of sugar, of bananas, of beef - the livelihoods of some of the poorest people in our countries - for the most part in rural communities - have been sustained at tolerable levels. The case for continuity goes to the essential rationale of the Lomé partnership.

40. Of necessity, the ACP has of necessity to be committed to the fight against poverty. Naturally, it shares the EU’s espousal of poverty alleviation as an essential attribute of post-Lomé arrangements. The proof of our joint commitment to achieving this will lie in the practical effort that is made in improving on arrangements such as these which have demonstrated their capacity to make a difference to the quality of life of the poorest people in our communities - once the resources are commensurate to the will to remove the scourge of poverty. To make poverty alleviation the center-piece of the new Lomé will require more than the assertion of good intentions - or the substitution of social and political ‘pre-requisites’ for practical, and sometimes costly, economic instruments of assistance.

41. Some of those social and political objectives are not matters on which the ACP as a Group need to be lectured. Democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights in my part of the ACP world, for example, are part of our national civic ethic. If they were pre-requisites of development in the sense that is sometimes conveyed, namely, that if you get these fundamentals right the economic harvest will follow, we should be among the richest and in need of no assistance. What these virtues and values constitute are attributes of development, and as such they are vital to sustained development; they will never be a substitute for it - or for our attention to the economic essentials.

42. The ACP is seriously concerned about the debilitating external debt burden of many ACP countries and the decline of both official development assistance in real terms and foreign direct investment flows to ACP countries, since they constitute major impediments to the successful implementation of their reform and structural adjustment programmes. The ACP acknowledges the recent initiatives introduced by the World Bank and the IMF to tackle in a comprehensive manner the debt problem of heavily-indebted low-income countries. This initiative is a recognition of the insufficiency and the inadequacy of previous debt relief measures to address the debt predicament of severely indebted countries.

43. While approving some of the groundbreaking features of the initiatives, we feel that there is need for deeper, broader and speedier debt relief measures for the ACP countries. In particular, the new agreement should include provision for additional debt relief, including the write-off of all the debt incurred by the ACP states under the previous ACP-EU Convention. It should also include a commitment by the EU to actively promote and support urgent additional debt relief measures, including the rescheduling of debts owed to multilateral financial institutions by ACP countries as well as that owed to EU member states which are after all signatories to our Convention.

44. Notwithstanding all this, the ACP accepts the value of a political dialogue between the EU and the ACP as between partners for development cooperation. That means that it must conform to agreed principles, for example, that it is a dialogue in which the concerns of both sides regarding policies or practices of the other may be raised - provided they bear on the central objective of the Convention, namely, cooperation for development. The ACP, for example could require a dialogue with the EU on debt, or the treatment of migrants or European practices regarding the movement and disposal of hazardous waste, or CO₂ emissions, or on matters pertaining to the protection of cultural heritage or biodiversity. I would imagine the EU has a no less extensive agenda. This could be an invigorating enlargement of the partnership; but it must not be tarnished by intimations of political dictation or tainted with notions of conditionality.

45. And there are some new areas of dialogue that are of shared concern and mutual importance. Such an area is that of conflict within the Lomé family. The prevention of conflict, wherever possible, practical contributions to post-conflict situations are all matters that bear on development, and are within the ambit of our partnership for cooperation. They should be within the scope of ACP-EU political dialogue consistent with the roles of international, regional and sub-regional authorities.

46. Regarding the quite different matter of the ‘essential elements’ innovation of the 1995 Mid- Term Review the ACP would expect to see those provisions carried over to the post-Lomé IV arrangements. There is no empirical evidence for their enhancement or deepening. At the moment no measurable standards or verifiable indicators have even been developed for the 1995 provisions. They need time to work alongside new provisions for a genuine political dialogue of the kind I have described.

47. Another factor which should be taken into account in this regard is that of gender mainstreaming. You will appreciate, Madame Co-President, why I feel personally qualified to be authoritative on this matter. We know that women bring their own perspective to the development process. I am not saying that it is better than that of men or to be preferred. I am simply saying that, without women’s perspective, the whole is impoverished. The agreement already recognises that social and economic development cannot be secured in a sustainable way without the full participation of women. The majority of the people living in poverty are women and the implications of this state needs to be fully recognised. The adverse consequences arising from this should lead to the inclusion of explicit measures and strategies to promote gender equality within the proposals for future ACP-EU relations.

48. In this context, the new agreement should create a framework for action to integrate economic, cultural and social policies so that they become mutually supportive and allow for the inclusion of gender issues and activities in future operations by integrating gender concerns early on in the project cycle. Special emphasis has to be placed on women as participants and beneficiaries of the development process.

49. We will need to strengthen policies and programmes that improve, ensure and broaden the participation of women in all spheres of political, economic, social and cultural life, as equal partners, and improve their access to all resources required for the full exercise of their fundamental rights.

50. One of the criticisms directed to the Lomé Convention has been its difficult structure, opaque language and repetitive nature. Nowhere is this weakness in the Convention more evident than in the arrangements for financial and technical cooperation. We wish to have a Convention with simpler language, a clear and more logical structure with principles and procedures clearly identified and separated. But this is not an invitation for the Secretariats to prepare a successor Convention which is five pages long and leaves all decisions and interpretations of its general clauses at the discretion of the Commission. A clearer document means one that is reasonably easy to follow. I say no more.

51. It ought not to be necessary for me to make reference to the need to improve the procedures and arrangements associated with the management of the Convention. However, we wish to remind the EU of the recommendations commonly referred to as the Post-Fiji Resolution adopted by the Council of Ministers in this regard. One of special interest is the need to decentralize decision-making by the Commission and to eliminate irrelevant and cumbersome procedures.

52. A second requirement is the need to ensure some flexibility in the utilization of instruments. We need a reasonable range of instruments available for disbursing assistance if we are to cater to some of the more fundamental differences between ACP states. We see value in having both project and budgetary forms of aid maintained in the successor agreement since each has advantages depending on the subjective circumstances at hand.

53. But let me say this: for many of our states the dependence on EU trade in particular is so crucial that we are not prepared to agree to mere speculative changes. We know from bitter experience that it is easier to generate social and political instability by economic change than to restore order by pleading good intentions. We should not compound the plight of states that are already vulnerable in so many ways.

54. It should be evident from all I have said that there is need for a genuine political encounter before substantive negotiations can begin. Those negotiations will inevitably have to be segmented and sectoral. That is simply not possible as a process unless the parties to the negotiations - the EU and the ACP - have a frank political discussion of an overarching kind as to the nature and scope of the negotiations before us. The ACP calls for this in the belief that it can contribute significantly to preparing the ground for the negotiations which, in the language of the existing Convention, we are required to enter into ‘in order to examine what provisions shall subsequently govern relations between the Community and the Member States, on the one hand, and the ACP States, on the other’.

55. The ACP has no illusions of the degree of difficulty that attends these negotiations. But we are conscious that no worthy endeavour can be brought to fruition without commitment and effort. We believe profoundly that this is a worthy endeavour. We bring to it a strong and united commitment to succeed and a readiness to work to that end - an end that concerns not just relations between countries, but the lives and livelihoods of the people of Europe and the 650 million people of the ACP States. We cannot afford to fail and neither are we at liberty to abstain from this task.