The time is running out to STOP Europe's Unfair Trade Deals
Only a few months remain before the deadline for poor countries to accept EU demands for new trade rules which will undermine the fight against poverty and favour European businesses and investors.
The EU is pushing these agreements, so-called Economic Partnership Agreements(EPAs), on 76 former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (the ACP), including 39 of the poorest countries in the world in return for maintaining access to European markets. The EU now want poor countries to open up their markets to EU businesses and sign up to a set of new agreements which developing countries have already rejected. These agreements:
- threaten the jobs and livelihoods of people living in poverty
- threaten the future industrialisation of the world's poorest countries
- threaten basic human rights and the provision of public services
- threaten poor countries' ability to manage their own economies in the public interest
In the face of the formal deadline of 31 December 2007, the EU is putting tremendous pressure on the ACP countries to sign EPAs by the end of the year, which have included threats to reduce development aid and increase tariffs on their exports into the EU market.
Action
We are asking all of you to email Ministerof State Michael Kitt and/or the new EU President today.
Act Now 
