In June 2011, African leaders unveiled concrete plans to create an African-wide free trade area when they announced that 26 African nations will join the three existing, but often overlapping regional trade blocks. Their ambition is to create a duty and quota free movements of goods, services and business people by 2016, and an Africa-wide economic and monetary area by 2025.

There are very obvious advantageous of an African free trade area. Pooling their markets may help African economies better take advantage of new growth opportunities offered by the rise of powerful new emerging powers. It may also help African economies overcome new challenges caused by the decline of some of the old industrial powers in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

Given the debt crises in the US and the EU it becomes even more important for African countries to integrate closer and quicker, because better intra-regional trade can provide a protective buffer from global shocks. Furthermore, it may provide a protective wall to African countries to beneficiate their economies from single-commodity dominated ones and nurture new manufacturing and services industries.

Many African economies are so tiny they are unviable on their own. Pooling African economies will bring larger economies of scale and markets which has the potential of expanding production and demand. Currently African countries trade more with the rest of the world, mostly former colonial powers, than with each other.

What should be done differently to prevent the idea of an African grand free trade area turning into a grand failure?

The first requirement is political will – at the heart of many African development failures.

There are a number of regional trade blocs in Africa, all with different rules, regulations and are at different stages of integration – all which could slow the building a free trade area.

Whatever the level of integration within these regional groupings, all of them have struggled to free the movement of goods, labour and services.

There are high levels of protectionism between African countries. Restrictive trade permits requirements and frequent bans on imports from neighbours persist. Economic disparities between African countries are further obstacles. Smaller countries fear domination by bigger neighbours, while bigger ones, fear a grand free trade area would lead to domination by South African produce. Non-trade tariffs such as travel restrictions, poor physical infrastructure, incompetent public administrations and rampant corruption are major stumbling blocks.

Political instability in many African countries is a major problem. Most of African economies are one raw material or agricultural product-based economies. African countries typically export raw materials abroad and buy the finished products at higher prices.

Africa’s rising growth has mostly been because of a boost in mineral exports’, increase local demand at home due growing domestic markets fuelled by a rising African middle class, and increased trade with new emerging powers, such as China, India and Brazil. However, Africa’s current growth spurt is following the old pattern of being based on exporting raw materials instead of diversifying into manufacturing, services and value-add products. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan rightly calls this African growth spurt, ‘low-quality’ growth. The growth has remained “inequitable, jobless, (and) volatile” and if continued on current patterns unlikely to lead to widespread job creation and poverty reduction. A report by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the African Union (AU) released in July 2011, titled “Economic Report on Africa 2011,” urged Africans to diversify production and exports through improving “competitiveness by tackling supply-side constraints as well as improving infrastructure and productive capacities, among other things”.

Weak logistics and supply chains, and scarce bank finance are other obstacles.

Africa imports most of the manufacturing and services it could arguably produce at home from abroad – this will have to be rectified.

The challenge is for individual African countries within a grand free trade area to specialize: one country must produce what another country can’t, but needs. In fact, each African country should pick the manufacturing and service sectors they may have competitive advantages, and then trade or barter with each other. At the moment if one African country needs manufactured products, few neighbours can provide it.

Each African country should be required to cobble together an industrial policy which at its heart should have diversifying from one agricultural product or commodity to value-added products.

All the individual country industrial policies must feed into a regional industrial policy; which in turn should be connected to a continental-wide industrial policy for Africa. Developing regional supply chains for products can help African economies against global shocks, such as the current debt crises in the Eurozone and US. The bulk of the indigenous sectors of most African economies are in the informal sector, that’s also where most of the jobs are being created. A free trade zone among Africans will be useless unless it includes small traders in the informal sectors, who are often face formidable bureaucratic barriers.

The existing regional blocs should be turned into regional economic growth zones. Infrastructure – power, transport, telecommunication networks and so on – should be developed within each country, within and between the regional economic growth zones.

A continental infrastructure grid must connect the regional economic growth zones.

Up to this day most infrastructure networks in most African countries have not changed since colonialism. Colonial powers constructed infrastructure networks in the countries under their control from the small areas that produced the one commodity or agriculture product to the coast for export to the ‘mother’ country. The colonial infrastructure networks rarely connected neighbouring countries.

Sadly, African countries during the post-colonial period have left such infrastructure arrangements untouched and even unmaintained.

All the regional blocs must work towards macro-economic convergence – setting basic prudent standards for fiscal and monetary policy. Exchange rate volatility – often because of poor monetary policies – has been a particular problem in Africa.

Convergence of macro-economic policies will be a challenge given the history of African countries over-emphasising political and economic sovereignty.

Most African countries have trade agreements with former colonial powers which often undermine integration with other African countries. The European Union’s economic partnership agreements (EPAs) demand that African countries declare the EU as ‘most favourite nation’. Under the United States African Growth Opportunities Act (AGOA), the US signs trade arrangements with individual African countries – rather than with regional blocs. This undermines African regional integration and the formation of regional supply chains.

It would naïve to think that the new emerging powers such as China and India would suddenly open their markets for African products. In reality it is very difficult for African manufactured products and services – to penetrate China and Indian markets.

African countries will have to trade more smartly – together – with their new emerging market friends as well as with old industrial powers. Given the impact of the global financial crisis on industrial countries it is unlikely that high tariff barriers and subsidies in industrial nations and new emerging powers are going to decline significantly – in many cases they may become more protective and cut development aid.

It will also be silly to think that if industrial nations and new emerging powers suddenly lift tariff barriers and subsidies to African products that many African producers will be able to compete. Most African countries are uncompetitive – compared to industrial nations and some new emerging market players – when it comes to manufactures and services. However, African produce and services may perhaps be uncompetitive for whatever reasons in industrial markets – but African countries can trade these products with each other, if they off course can bring down the costs of infrastructure, red tape and corruption.

For another, the big challenge also for Africans is going to be to set out a legally binding mechanism – and penalties – to get signatories to the free trade area to stay the course. Africans will also have to set up more effective dispute resolutions to deal with inevitable trade disputes between members. Lastly, better African leadership and greater democracy remains a crucial barrier in creating an effective free trade area. African citizens – farmers, traders, civil society and individual citizens’ – must actively participate in building a grand free trade area, if it is to be durable.

William Gumede is Honorary Associate Professor, Graduate School of Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is the co-editor of The Poverty of Ideas, Jacana.

The recent essay collection, The new British politics and Europe: Conflict or cooperation?, co-published by the Foreign Policy Centre puts forward some ideas in answer to this question. Put simply, the real challenge for pro-Europeans is to address the EU as it is, warts and all, and develop a campaign that seeks to build public understanding and acceptance of the principle of European engagement through persistent, practical examples of how action at an EU level can address problems that are relevant both to people’s everyday lives and to the important domestic political issues of the day. To fill the void left by the 2005 collapse of Britain in Europe, what is needed is a pro-European organisation in the same mould as eurosceptic group Open Europe. That would be a dynamic pressure group which is both pragmatic and reformist but which can promote the basic central premise that the EU can be (and often is) a platform for solving transnational issues that matter to Britain, while understanding that Europe isn’t the answer in and of itself. Pro-Europeans need to adopt both the same guerrilla warfare tactics used by their opponents and channel the energy of sympathetic bloggers and other independent researchers, giving a sense of energy and drive that has been sorely lacking on the pro-side of the argument in recent years.

Amongst some in the wider community of pro-Europeans, there remains a desire for a ‘big vehicle’ to get behind to mobilise public opinion in a more positive direction. This must stop. In the UK, such a vehicle is not going to come naturally and this desire c lead to a dangerous flirtation with the idea of an ‘in or out’ referendum, something that would create more heat than light and would be unlikely to settle the issue for any great length of time – an engineered crisis that would risk becoming a real one in today’s volatile political environment.

Mainstream pro-Europeans must clearly show that they are committed to a Europe of nation states that pragmatically work together to face common problems. The flirtations with federalism by some more ardent europhiles should be knocked on the head. Pro-Europeans must at all times show that they understand that sovereignty and legitimacy flow from the people alone, up to the various tiers of government and that the goal of politicians is to assess the best level at which to manage political issues on behalf of their populaces. Subsidiarity, Subsidiarity, Subsidiarity.

Continually complaining about the eurosceptic bias in the print media isn’t going to get anyone very far. No matter how effective a pro-European campaign may become, there will always be more negative stories about EU activities than positive ones, and this is not in and of itself linked to the anti-European sentiments of a handful of newspaper proprietors. It is fairly simple; the EU is, in effect, a tier of government. We do not express surprise that press coverage of domestic politics or government action tends to focus on the comparatively few areas of controversy rather than the majority of cases where it goes about its day to day business. To be honest there are few people who are more intrigued by puff pieces than they are by incisive critiques. To place stories about the EU’s ability to solve important cross-border challenges, it remains essential to spell out the nature of the problems it is looking to tackle in fairly explicit detail in order to set the scene for how action at a European level might help.

The British public is never going to love the EU. Just as with any other level of UK government, there will always be a degree of inherent scepticism about the institution, as befits our national character. So the goal for British pro-Europeans must be to finally gain British public acceptance of the EU as part of the furniture of UK governance, shifting the focus to the content of EU action and where it should do more and where it should do less.

September 2011
Originally published at the <http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/adam-hug/getting-britains-proeurop_b_944735.html Huffington Post UK>

One thing was certain about the June 2011 elections in Turkey: AKP would win. Yet speculation over whether or not it would earn a greater share of the vote was rife, as was the forecasting of how many votes the renewed leadership of the leading secular opposition party, CHP (Republican People’s Party) would attract, or whether the MHP (Nationalist Movement Party) would make the 10% threshold to enter parliament, or how many MPs the Kurdish BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) would have.

Lessons have clearly been learned from Iraq for post-Gaddafi Libya. They will have been passed on, not least, by the British envoy to the Libyan rebels – John Jenkins, who was ambassador in Baghdad before going to Benghazi. The National Transition Council’s blueprint for preserving order in a post-Gaddafi Tripoli appears designed precisely to stave off the kind of anarchy that prevailed in Baghdad in 2003. Though it has not so far succeeded, that is not for want of thought and planning.

This, of course, is the danger of all lessons learned after an event: simply knowing what went wrong last time does not mean that it can be done the next time around. Events happen rapidly and chaotically, and the parties involved are not necessarily going to stick to any plan that has been given them.

We can be sure, in short, that other things will go wrong in Libya. People will die; shops and government buildings will be looted; the new government will seem weak, or autocratic, or even both; the country’s economy and infrastructure will take years to rebuild. But we should beware hasty despondency just as much as hasty triumphalism. All these things may happen, and yet the revolution will still have been a success, if it can deliver Libya a better future than the one that it faced under Gaddafi.

None of these things should make us want to send foreign troops into Libya. And that, I suggest, is the clearest lesson to be learned from Iraq, Afghanistan and even Vietnam. In each case, the fact that the country’s government needed an outside power to provide its military capabilities had three significant disadvantages. First, it gave its enemies the patriotic high ground. The Taliban have taken full advantage of the fact that they are fighting British soldiers in southern Afghanistan; it has meant they can call on all the folk memories of three Anglo-Afghan wars. A foreign combat presence in Libya risks stoking Islamist sentiment but also stirring painful memories of the Italian occupation of Libya in the 1920s and 1930s, during which tens of thousands of Libyans died in concentration camps.

Second, it made those governments look weak. Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has sought, ever since taking power, to project strength – and one way he did so was by asking British troops to leave. No wonder: a government that needs foreigners to protect it is not only discredited politically, but is obviously vulnerable. Foreign support being often a fickle thing, it can encourage internal enemies to believe that they need only wait out the foreigners rather than make peace. Even if Libya’s path to peace may be bloodier without foreign help, it will be a surer peace if it is home-grown rather than imposed from outside.

Third, it sapped the initiative and willpower of the countries’ own governments, encouraging an unhealthy dependence on foreigners. Afghan leaders have felt hemmed in by the multifarious advice of their foreign allies, the fact being that a large part of the economy, and the executive arm of the government, has become dependent on them. Sherard Cowper-Coles’s memoir Cables from Kabul, and Roderic Braithwaite’s Afgantsy, illustrate this with examples from the Western and Soviet experience in Afghanistan respectively.

The National Transition Council does deserve our support, but not of that kind; even if it asks for foreign combat forces then Nato should refuse. Unfreezing assets and promoting EU-Libya trade would be better ways to help – putting aid above defence, and trade above aid. It should be a politically savvy kind of help, one which again lets the Libyans decide what structures of government they want, rather than bringing in Western consultants with cookie-cutter solutions and a yen to create in Tripoli the kind of institutions that work in Washington and London.

There are three areas where our advice might be particularly useful. First, on how to keep the oil industry from becoming a source of corruption — as it became in Iraq. Second, how to keep the country’s arsenal of weaponry (including any chemical weapons) from falling into the wrong hands.

The third area is the holding of elections. These can be a powerful legitimising tool. They have often however proved cumbersome, destabilising and divisive – specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan. Afghan election results have split almost consistently on ethnic lines; early elections in Iraq cemented the country’s religious divisions. An abortive Algerian election in 1991 prompted a vicious civil war. None of this shows that elections are wrong, but they do show that they must be adequately prepared for.

A constitutional process, on the other hand, is something that the Libyans should be left to take at their own speed. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, rushed constitutional processes – at least partly designed for the international audience – probably made peace settlements harder by setting the country’s government arrangements in stone.

There is one last lesson that I hope we take from Afghanistan and Iraq. If we hope to influence a country, and if we are in fact (whether we choose it or not) in a position to influence its future for better or worse, then we have a moral duty to treat its people – as Kant would say – as ends, not means. We should care about Libyans’ lives, aspirations, ambitions and fears. Our diplomats should take risks, if need be, to make sure that they continue to listen to the Libyan people. Our leaders should take care to communicate with them, rather than letting them hear Western policies announced at second or third-hand. Arabic satellite channels offer that opportunity. The UK, French and US governments should redouble their efforts to monitor and engage with those satellite channels, in close coordination with the Libyan government, to ensure that political signals in Paris, Washington and London are not misunderstood.

This article was first published at http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2011/08/24/comment-lessons-for-libya-from-iraq-and-afgha

It first started with comments made by the Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu two weeks ago. Davutoglu publicly stated that unless the Cyprus issue is resolved by early 2012, negotiations with the EU may be frozen. This deadline is based on the start of Cyprus’ turn for EU presidency. Since Turkey does not officially accept the existence of the Republic of Cyprus, the FM argued that Turkey cannot engage with the EU presidency while Cyprus is in office; thus EU-Turkish relations will, de facto, be frozen.

Then came the harsher comments by the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan over the last week. Prior to his visit to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), the PM gave a series of interviews to the Turkish and Cypriot press, as well as some stronger public talks while on the disputed island.

The Prime Minister declared that the issue has to be solved at least in principle, and agreements reached before the EU presidency, underlining Turkey’s preference for a federal unification of both sides of the island. In addition, Erdogan has retracted AK Party’s (AKP) willingness to offer land swaps in certain areas and clearly asserted that if no agreement is reached by July 2012, Turkey and the TRNC will close negotiations and the island will forever be two independent states on current borders. This clear Turkish challenge puts the ball not only in the Greek Cypriot but also the EU’s court.

Erdogan was key in triggering the initiatives undertaken by Kofi Annan, which came to an abrupt end when the Greek Cypriots voted ‘No’ to the UN’s proposals. In contrast, the Turkish Cypriots voted ‘Yes’ with a clear majority. AKP had in fact put serious political capital behind the Annan plan.

While Kofi Annan gave up on solving the issue, the EU took a controversial decision and allowed the Republic of Cyprus into the EU without any concrete solution to the conflict. This has subsequently caused both the TRNC and Turkey to feel betrayed and disillusioned as they upheld their sides of the bargain.

Ever since, Greek Cyprus has vetoed EU-Turkish accession talks at every step of the conversation. Since EU countries remain divided on the Turkish bid, it is no surprise that Turkey believes that neither the Republic of Cyprus nor the EU actually want to solve this problem and quicken the Turkish accession into the EU.

The fact that the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon recently initiated a preliminary meeting with Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaders for a final UN attempt to unite the island, has triggered the latest escalation of Turkey’s focus on the island. The General Secretary too sees these talks as a last chance. Until now, neither the EU nor Greek Cyprus seem moved by Turkish and UN timelines and demands, while sponsor country Greece is too troubled domestically to even engage on the issue.

A catalytic shock was indeed needed to conclude, positively or negatively, the nightmare problem that has caused so many diplomats and mediators severe depression. In such a scenario there are only three possible outcomes from this gamble.

Either, the EU will show their resolve and thus pressure the Republic of Cyprus to let go of maximalist goals and accept in principle a timetable for the unification of the island, thus compromise; or, this would indeed finally end all chances of unification, and see the TRNC and Turkey begin work on long term nation-building.

While the former result would have tremendously positive outcomes both for Cyprus, the EU, Greece, Turkey and the feeble Eastern Mediterranean, the latter would not only result in EU-Turkish relations being frozen during Cypriot presidency, eventual political solutions for EU-Turkey tensions would be much harder to identify.

Even though the populist French and German political mood might seem to argue for exclusion of Turkey from the EU, in actuality, all of the EU states are acutely aware that they need Turkey, both economically and increasingly diplomatically as Turkey deepens its regional power and appeal. While Turkey will never give up bilateral relations with European countries, it also looks less and less in need of EU membership.

The third outcome from this gamble might be that AKP will eventually have to retract its deadlines and harsh tones, and accept the status quo. Then, AKP would have to face serious loss of diplomatic capital and a weaker stand against the EU countries which oppose Turkish membership. This would enable Greek Cyprus to find a way out of being seen as the primary reason why the issue is not solved, and blame Turkey for being the unreasonable party.

It is high time, not only to show genuine will to solve the Cyprus problem, but also once and for all finalize whether Turkey will ever be an EU state. The AKP seem set to force the moment to a crisis to find a conclusion; a dangerous, but much needed gamble.

In a new FPC Briefing Tanweer Ali examines worrying trends in human rights standards in the Czech Republic.

There cannot be any clearer illustration of the impotence of Africa’s continental and regional institutions to find local solutions to the continent’s problems, than their numbing inaction in the face of the wave of popular rebellions against dictators in North Africa sweeping across the continent.

The current leaders of regional and continental institutions are too discredited, the institutions too toothless and the rules for membership too lenient for them to be effective. The solution is to radically overhaul regional institutions – or close them down.
In order to reverse this dispiriting situation, African countries will have to bring new energy, ideas and leaders to make regional and continental institutions work. Furthermore, we need new objectives and new concepts and even new words that are appropriate for our times.
The wave of rebellions against dictators that started in North Africa, the global financial crisis, and the rise of emerging countries such as China, Brazil and India, which is likely to remake the world, offers a critical juncture for African countries to change outdated institutions.
If we do not, the rupture that the global financial crisis is causing to nations may actually make the continent poorer.

Africa’s future prosperity still lies in individual countries pooling their markets, development efforts and attempts to seriously build democracy. Yet the idea of pan-Africanism in which all African countries will join into a happy family is simply silly.

The basis of a revamped African Union (AU) must start with a small group of countries that can pass a double “stress test” based on quality of a democracy and the prudence of their economic governance.

Because membership of the AU is largely voluntary, countries such as Zimbabwe may still be members even if their governments have appalling human rights records, and spectacularly mismanage their countries’ economics and politics.

A revamped AU should be based on a three-track system. The first track would consist of a core group of countries that meet the minimum democratic and economic governance criteria. A second track would be those which did not make the cut in democratic and economic management terms, but which are serious about pursuing the new objectives of the AU. The second track countries should be assessed on an annual basis to see whether they are ready to enter the first track. The rest, the third group, would be the assortment of dictatorships – which should be shunned until they improve.

Stricter rules will mean that the AU will start off initially as a small club of countries. Perhaps only South Africa, Mauritius, Botswana, Cape Verde, Namibia – and then only if the criteria are in some cases flexibly applied.
These top-tier African countries could be the core of the first African-wide set of industrial policies and a long-term economic development strategy to lift African countries up the industrial value chain.

Countries which adhere to these criteria could be rewarded with new investments, development projects and support. Special Africa investment funds could be set up, for example pooling the proceeds from commodities, to finance social and physical infrastructure across the continent. Proceeds from such funds would be distributed on the basis of the willingness of nations to reform.

The fund could be used for targeted development in underdeveloped areas of the countries that make the criteria.

Those countries scoring badly – and showing no willingness to reform – should be sidelined until they shape up.

The sub-regional African institutions, SADC, Comesa and EAC (East Africa Community) should all be collapsed to make way for a revamped continent-wide common market and free trade area.

The difficulties that industrial nations now experience because of the global financial crisis means they are likely to become more protectionist, rather than less.
African countries will just have to trade smarter within, and with new trading partners among emerging markets.
Africa’s manufactures and services may be uncompetitive in relation to industrial nations, but can be traded with other African countries.

Continental and regional institutions’ peace and security policies still have their focus on state security rather than human security. This wrong-headed principle is at the heart of African peers shielding despots such as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe from criticism, rather than coming to the aid of desperate citizens. African leaders always side with fellow African leaders when they are criticised by the West, no matter the merits of the criticisms.

African solidarity must not be based on leaders or on false unity, but on values such as democracy, social justice, clean government, ethnic inclusiveness and peace.

The AU’s charter will have to be changed from protecting the sovereignty of individual countries to protecting the security of ordinary Africans. The principle of non-interference in the affairs of neighbours still partially informs the AU’s reluctance to intervene forcefully in misgoverned nations.

A new AU must sponsor transparent procedures to impeach leaders who turn into tyrants, so that we do not again have the likes of Mugabe.

Political parties in AU member countries getting state funding should adhere to minimum internal democratic rules – to prevent one-man parties and tribal parties.
Post-independence pan-Africanism failed to build a sense of ownership among African citizens of African integration projects because they were always top-down, leadership focused, exclusive and non-participative rather than bottom-up, citizen driven, inclusive and participative.
This must change: ordinary citizens must be given a real say in the decisions that will ultimately impact on their lives.

The suit was filed on December 21, 2001, by the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), in light of Provisional Measure # 2.158-35/01, published during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration, against the levying of IR and CSLL on profits obtained by companies controlled from or co-connected abroad, independently from the availability of these amounts to the controlled or co-connected company in Brazil.

In its original petition, the CNI basically alleged the following:

• The unconstitutionality of § 2, of article 43, of the National Tax Code, plus Complementary Law # 104/01. According to the entity, this provision allows the ordinary legislator to establish the moment of occurrence of the generator factor, and can even do so before the fact has actually taken place, which would be going against the provisions of article 153, subsection III, of the Federal Constitution, and the concept of income contained therein
• defect pointed out in the heading of article 74 of Provisional Measure (PM) # 2.158-35/01, referring to the difference between co-connected and controlled companies
• sole paragraph of article 74 of the PM defends the principles of retroactivity and perviousness

Four justices found that the ADI had grounds, or in other words, for the unconstitutionality of article 74 of Provisional Measure 2.158-35/01: Ellen Gracie (partially, considering “unconstitutional only as far as co-connected companies are concerned”), Marco Aurélio, Lewandowiski and Sepúlveda Pertence, the latter retired (substituted by Dias Toffoli).

Two justices found that the ADI did not have grounds, in other words, for the validity of article 74: Nelson Jobim (substituted by Cármen Lúcia) and Eros Grau (substituted by Luiz Fux).

Justices Carlos Britto, Celso de Mello, Joaquim Barbosa and Cezar Peluso have yet to cast their votes. Gilmar Mendes, due to his previous involvement in the Union Legal Offices (AGU), was impeded from voting.

Currently, the mentioned ADI is under request of review by Justice Carlos Britto.

FPC research associate Andrew Southam explores some of the key issues in US-EU judicial co-operation.