Report accepted by Caricom sees shared sovereignty in `agreed areas'
Stabroek News
February 25, 2007
The governance report recently accepted by Caricom heads at their St Vincent meeting sees shared sovereignty in "agreed areas," the funding of institutions on the basis of GNP and a single act in all member countries which would allow a long-envisaged Caricom Commission to expedite decision-making.
These are among the recommendations made last year by the Caricom Technical Working Group (TWG). The final paragraph of the TWG report again stresses the urgency of a rapid decision on a matter which has engaged the region for decades.
"Given the length of time already spent on the consideration of regional governance in the Caribbean, it is recommended that a decision on the subject be adopted with a due sense of urgency. This is especially so in the context of achieving the objectives envisaged in the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas which remain central to the survival and prosperity of the Region," the report says.
The recent Caricom communiqué out of the St Vincent meeting, while announcing the acceptance of the TWG report, said that wide-ranging consultations throughout the region will now be held and an interim report will be presented to the meeting of Caricom Heads in July in Barbados.
The 47-page document, titled 'Report of the Technical Work Group on Governance Appointed by Caricom Heads of Government - Managing Mature Regionalism, Regional Governance in the Caribbean Community,' was released following its acceptance by Caricom Heads of Government (HoGs) at the Inter-Sessional Meeting in St Vincent and the Grenadines earlier this month.
The TWG, headed by Professor Vaughn Lewis of UWI St Augustine Campus, recommends the creation of a Caribbean Community Commission subject to the authority of the Conference of HoGs; expansion of the processes of regional decision-making through continuous collaboration between the cabinets of member states, the ministerial organs of the community and the commission; and progressive development of community law already enshrined in the Revised Treaty, as a basis for the operation of the community.
In his budget debate presentation last week, Minister of Foreign Trade and International Cooperation, Dr Henry Jeffrey had said that the government has accepted in principle the need for a better governance mechanism in Caricom, but it had certain reservations based on what it perceived to be the technocratic nature of the proposed Caricom Commission.
On the structure for community governance, the TWG recommended that the commission should constitute persons of "high political experience" who would have the capacity to give a deliberate policy direction and orientation to the commission; comprise four persons, one of whom should be the President; and maintain formal relationships with national cabinets, relevant ministries, community organs, the HoG - including the conference, the Prime Ministerial Bureau, the Quasi Cabinet, and the Assembly of Community Parliamentarians.
The group recommended that the portfolios of the three commissioners should be distributed in accordance with the broad subject areas of the integration movement - foreign and community relations, regional and international trade and economic integration (including finance and planning); and human and social development (including functional cooperation).
The president will have overall responsibility for coordinating and managing the work of the commission. This is in keeping with the recommendations of the Prime Ministerial Expert Group on Governance (PMEGG), which the TWG has accepted in broad outline, and which envisaged that only a limited number of commissioners focusing primarily on matters related to the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME) would be appointed. This was based on the understanding that additional commissioners could be appointed in future to deal with other areas of the integration movement, as may be necessary. However, the TWG suggested that it would be much more effective to link the commissioners to the broad subject areas of the integration movement.
The TWG further recommends among other things that the Caricom Secretariat be re-organised, re-designating the positions of assistant secretary-general as director general and assigning one each to the members of the proposed commission. The functions currently performed by the deputy secretary-general would be vested in a director-general who would be responsible for the administration of the commission. Meanwhile the position and functions of the secretary-general would be absorbed into those of the president of the commission.
Community law
Meanwhile, as regards community law this would be directed at empowering the ministerial organs of the community, in collaboration with the commission, to effect legally binding decisions on the organs of the community and on member states by virtue of the single Caricom Act.
The TWG recommends that one of the main objectives should be the decentralisation of regional decision-making. Implicit in this recommendation, the release said, is that the HoGs should insist that the sectoral ministerial councils use their full authority under the Revised Treaty to effect regional decisions instead of relaying a large number of issues to the HoGs as is done at present.
The TWG recommends that the president and other commissioners be the strategic link between the ministerial councils and the heads to assist in the formulation and legitimization of decisions made at the ministerial levels and facilitation of their implementation. Once these arrangements are formalised, the report said, the Community Council should be abolished, and its specific responsibility under the treaty "To examine and approve the community budget" transferred to COFAP (Council for Finance and Planning) with ministers responsible for community affairs being in attendance at the option of member states.
The group recommends that the commission, in the exercise of its functions, should have authority to intervene within individual national systems and at the level of regional entities on behalf of the collective political directorate in the elaboration and execution of agreed duties.
It recommends that the commission be provided with sufficient legislative and institutional authority to ensure enforcement of regional decisions through provisions in the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas. In this context it also recommends that the progressive development of community law should permit a distinction among decisions made at various levels, between regulations, directives, decisions, and recommendations and opinions to offer member states some flexibility in the reception of community law especially with respect to directives.
In view of the disparity in levels of development among member states, the TWG endorses the principle that integration must be premised on a bargain involving recognition of all the requirements for ensuring development by individual member states as well as the equitable distribution of the benefits of integration.
The report noted that the rationale for the setting up of the commission "derives from the general recognition of an `implementation deficit' in the activities of Caricom" due to the almost exclusive dependence of the community on member states implementing agreed measures and the absence of institutions encompassing members states and the community with specific responsibility to implement regional decisions.
The TWG said that perceived constraints to the working of the commission could be vaulted by the "collective delegation of executive authority of national cabinets to the Commission on specific agreed subjects…" and by "conceiving of the Commission as a mechanism functioning under authority of the Heads of Government in keeping with the principle of centralization of decision-making within the community on a rationalized basis."
Financing
With respect to automaticity and the financing of the institutions of integration, the TWG endorses the user of the Gross National Product as the primary measure of a member state's capacity to pay. It identifies import duties from among the options flagged in the technical sub-group report, as the preferred source at each national level for the automatic transfer of resources to the community. It recommended that the overall objective be pursued in two phases.
Phase One would be activated in Caricom Financial Year (FY) 2008 and would involve direct transfers of resources from national customs authorities to the community, pursuant to a budget approved by the conference. The report said these transfers would be to finance the budget of the integrated commission and secretariat, which should include a small unit to service the needs of the Assembly of Caribbean Community Parliamentarians (ACCP) and the budget of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM). The legal provisions for this would be put in place this year.
Phase Two would introduce the mechanisms for permitting greater automaticity into the process and will identify additional institutions to be brought under the regime.
In relation to the role of the ACCP in the integration process, the TWG recommended that the proposals outlined in the PMEGG report should form the basis for further strengthening of the ACCP. The proposals reaffirmed that the ACCP should continue to function as a consultative and deliberative body instead of a legislative one; revise and adopt its standing orders to include, as national delegations, both government and opposition parliamentarians; expand the category of observers in the ACCP to include civil society representatives; entertain expert witnesses to advice on any subject it may be considering and provide for their attendance in the ACCP's budget.
Meanwhile, the TWG report endorsed the PMEGG recommendation that Caricom should continue to operate as "a community of sovereign states" on the basis of the new legal and institutional arrangements which would be manifested in the concept of shared sovereignty in agreed areas by member states and this would be determined on the basis of two principles - proportionality and "subsidiarity."
The principle of 'proportionality' (used effectively by the European Union), stipulates that the "content of and the institutional arrangements devised for community action shall not exceed what is necessary to achieve the objectives of the Revised Treaty, and that this would be supported by the principle of 'subsidiarity.'" Subsidiarity in this case "asserts that regional action would not be pursued in cases where action by individual member states is sufficient to achieve the specified goals of the community and these states demonstrate a commitment to pursue such action.
Effective governance in the Caribbean integration context, the TWG concludes, could best be understood by an approach which combines elements of "inter-governmentalism" - which recognises the continuing importance of individual member states in determining the path of the integration process, and elements of functionalism - which is premised on the principle of shared sovereignty or the collective exercise of such sovereignty in specified areas.
The TWG on the governance of Caricom was established by the HoGs at their 26th meeting in July 2005. This came out of a recommendation of the PMEGG for a structure of regional governance consistent with the logic of regional economic integration reflected in the revised treaty. The PMEGG was appointed in 2003 and submitted its report to the 16th Inter-Sessional Meeting in Suriname, 2005. In 2005 the Prime Ministerial Bureau was tasked to examine the report with the chairman of the PMEGG and submit concrete proposals in July 2005. Based on their consideration of the issue at the 17th Inter-Sessional Meeting in February, 2006, the HoGs appointed the TWG and assigned it the task of examining the PMEGG report with a view to suggesting the most feasible options for implementing its recommendations.
The other members of the TWG were Prof Denis Benn of UWI, Mona Campus; Angela Cropper of the Cropper Foundation, Prof Ralph Carnegie of UWI, Cave Hill Campus and James Moss-Solomon of the Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce.