From Lomé to Cotonou

The ACP/EU Sugar Protocol in the context of the new ACP/EU Partnership Agreement

On 23 June 2000 the new Partnership Agreement between the 77 ACP countries and the 15 member states of the European Union was signed in Cotonou. The guiding principles of the new Agreement are the reduction and eventual eradication of poverty, and the gradual integration of the ACP countries into the global economy. Furthermore, the Partnership Agreement "is also a framework for new partnerships for trade and investment"

Article 13 of Annex V of the Partnership Agreement now provides as follows:

"In accordance with Article 25 of the ACP-EEC Convention of Lomé signed on 28 February 1975 and with Protocol 3 annexed thereto [the ACP/EU Sugar Protocol], the Community has undertaken for an indefinite period … to purchase and import, at guaranteed prices, specific quantities of cane sugar, raw or white, which originates in the ACP States producing and exporting cane sugar and which those States have undertaken to deliver to it."

Thus the political and economic importance of these key elements of the Sugar Protocol have been reiterated in the new ACP/EU Partnership Agreement.

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