African countries must agree new trade deals with Europe by the end of the year or risk losing valuable commerce, European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Louis Michel said on Friday.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) outlawed the European Union's preferential trade terms for nearly 80 of its African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) former colonies in 2001, but granted a waiver until the end of 2007.
Michel said during a trip to Ghana's capital Accra that reforms at home were the surest way to improve African economies, rather than prolonging that waiver. "Arguing in favour of extending the deadline ... is not reasonable, it is not intellectually honest. This is a challenge to the African countries, they have to reform the systems they are living in, they have to improve governance," he said.
"They will not be better off if they wait one or two years more. It will not get better, it will get worse," he told a news conference on the sidelines of an Africa-Europe business forum.
The EU is negotiating with six regional blocs, including the Economic Community of West African states (ECOWAS), to negotiate new deals called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), meant to phase in freer trade over a number of years.
Michel said Europe's markets were already becoming increasingly open to African trade, adding that African exports to Europe would be duty- and quota-free by 2015.
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