ACP–EU trade cooperation after 2000: an assessment of reciprocal trade preferences

The establishment of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995 reflected and reinforced significant shifts in global orthodoxies in favour of the liberalisation of world trade, and posed problems for trading arrangements such as the Lomé Conventions between the European Union (EU) and the 70 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states, which had initially been established in the very different setting of the mid-1970s. Integral to the Lomé Conventions has been the principle of non-reciprocity, under which the EU offered preferential conditions for access to its markets by products originating in the ACP states, without any requirement for reciprocal concessions (other than most-favoured-nation status) by the ACP. These preferences are due to expire with the 4th Lomé Convention in February…