A time for decision
Editorial
Stabroek News
June 18, 2003
On Friday, 20th June, Greece will be hosting the European Union (EU) Summit Conference. Greece is the current chairman of the EU; the Chairmanship rotates every six months among member states in much the same way as it does with Caricom Heads of Government.
This EU Summit is of particular importance as it will have before it for adoption nothing less than a Constitution for the European Union at a time when its membership is to be expanded from fifteen to twenty-five. Ten new states from Central and Eastern Europe are to be admitted in May next year.
What will be discussed in Greece should be of particular interest to Caricom as not only did the European Community, as it then was, serve as a `model’ for Caribbean integration but even more so because Caricom Heads of Government will themselves be meeting in Montego Bay, Jamaica in about two weeks time in a somewhat similar exercise to discuss proposals for structural reform of Caricom.
In Caricom at this time there is growing awareness that the regional movement is in need of fundamental overhaul. Prime Minister Patterson of Jamaica just before the last Summit in Port-of-Spain last February had described it as being in a ramshackle condition. Reacting to such awareness the Port-of-Spain Summit agreed to establish an Expert Group “to carry the process (of consultation) forward by undertaking an examination of proposals submitted and to make recommendations on how best to perfect regional integration”. It is that Group which will be reporting to the forthcoming Jamaican Summit.
The main aim of the EU proposals which will be considered on Friday in Greece is to create an even closer union through the pooling of sovereignties. When the new states are admitted the EU’s population will rise to four hundred and fifteen million. Most EU Member states already have high levels of development. Although separated by languages and historically shaped identities, they have chosen ever closer union in what will soon become the most powerful economic bloc in the world.
By contrast, the peoples of the Caribbean Community seem to be steadily drifting further apart. Decisions by the Caricom Summit and other organs are not implemented or are subverted as witnessed for example (and this is only an example) by the denial to Guyana’s rice producers of the market to which they are entitled in Caricom under treaty arrangements. Even more outrageously, the tiny island of Nevis (36 square miles with a population of 7,000) is now seeking independence opting out of its federation with St. Kitts!
To appreciate the full significance of what is being considered in Greece, the proposals must be seen for what they are. They are not just the tidying up of treaty arrangements but no less than the adoption of a constitution which will move the EU towards a federation. For example, in future it will have not a rotating Chairmanship but a President who will hold office for a fixed period of years and will thus provide for continuity, unlike the present provision under which each Chairman in turn projects his own priorities.
It is also to have a Foreign Minister who speaks for Europe. It is to be noted that the EU considers it necessary to speak with a single powerful voice although under current arrangements the EU already has two foreign policy spokesmen namely Javier Solana, Foreign Policy Chief under the arrangements for the coordination of foreign policies and Chris Patten, Commissioner for External Relations.
The European Parliament which already has important control of the budget will have an enhanced role; it will elect the Chairman of the Commission. The Commission is a unique feature of European integration. It is an executive body which has the power to make regulations (i.e. EU law) which are automatically binding on member states.
In short the changes outlined above go beyond an integration treaty between states and amount, as already noted, to a constitution. In addition to streamlining the Union to cope with its imminent expanded membership, the constitution responds in the much altered milieu of the twenty-first century to a fundamental question with two sub-questions.
(l) What is the movement for?
(a) what are the expectations of citizens and are they being met;
(b) is the movement capable of ensuring that the international system is supportive of regional security, trade, development etc.
It should be illuminating to apply the above criteria to Caricom at this time when its reform is being considered.
Caricom began, as the Wise Men’s report asserts, as an expression of common identity rather than of economic planning. It bore the marks of the failed federation, as it was an attempt to get together at the level of trade while
avoiding political unity. The Preamble to the Treaty of Chaguaramas outlined the objectives of the participating states as follows:
“... to consolidate and strengthen the bonds which have historically existed among their peoples; ... a common determination to fulfil the hopes and aspirations of their peoples for full employment and improved standards of work and living...”.
Neither of these expectations has been met in any significant way. The freeing up of inter-regional trade has had only modest effects on employment and living standards. On the question of strengthening bonds Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves in the course of his lecture which inaugurated the Caricom Distinguished Lecture Series remarked “Guyanese visitors are by and large looked upon with grave suspicion by the immigration authorities of sister Caricom countries.Americans and Canadians are welcomed with open arms in Barbados whilst St Lucians and Vincentians are generally treated as unwanted strangers at the gates. Rastafarians are instinctively discriminated against by immigration and customs officers in practically every country in the region, possibly save and except Jamaica and Barbadians are caricatured as “Smart men” who must be watched closely at ports of entry and beyond”. So much for strengthening the bonds.
As for coping with the international environment, in one sector of vital interest namely in maintaining the markets for the traditional export commodities there has been limited success through the regional negotiating machinery established by Caricom. But about this sector Enrique Iglesias, President of the Inter American Bank and a friend of the Caribbean has warned. “There is every prospect of the loss or severe erosion of trade preferences for traditional agricultural products - bananas, citrus, rice, sugar and rum - in the European Union market. At the same time, the principle of reciprocity that underlines trade negotiations these days means that transition periods - even for small and vulnerable economies - will probably be squeezed, the only question being the ability of your negotiators to limit the damage”.
Even the above limited, admittedly impressionistic observations should serve to show why there is growing disillusionment among Caricom citizens with regional integration and why there is a far way to go in forming a “common front in relation to the external world”, as the Treaty enjoins.
The Group of Experts established by the Port-of-Spain Summit in fact consisted of a sub-committee of Prime Ministers from Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago with Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves as Chairman. In a press statement Prime Minister Gonsalves (SN June 12) has stated that they are on the verge of implementing the most ambitious form of economic union that it is possible to conceive. The report further states that they were preparing for a radical overhaul of the structure of the community.
The hard driven peoples of Caricom must look forward to the decisions to be taken in Jamaica. One can only hope that P.M. Gonsalves, very much the new boy on the block, has persuaded his Presidential and Prime Ministerial colleagues to share his vision and that the proposals to which he refers will not as usual be kicked sideways into oblivion.
In the meantime, it should be a sobering thought for the Summit that one Member state, Dominica, seems soon destined to become a “failed society”, a situation foreshadowed for Caricom by Prime Minister Owen Arthur in his address to a recent meeting of the Caribbean Development Bank. In Dominica at this time public servants and teachers are not negotiating for a pay increase but about what percentage cut in salaries would ensure the survival of their jobs.
