Fairness in international trade

Abstract

“Any attempt to define fairness in global trade relations should teach humility.” The paper begins by setting out the background to international trade relations between the EC and developing countries before turning to look at EPAs themselves in more detail and the effects that have been predicted on the developing countries if EPAs were to be introduced in the way envisaged, together with a number of associated issues related to the introduction of EPAs. The paper then comments briefly on a “Stop EPAs” campaign that has been run by NGOs for a number of years, before presenting and commenting on the current position showing which EPAs have been signed. The literature on fairness in international trade is then reviewed and, to some extent, extended and applied to the case of EPAs. Conclusions which, as might already be predicted, are somewhat tentative, but do raise some new issues, are then drawn.