The EU is willing to use aid as a means of pressure to secure access to important raw materials, but can expect tough resistance.
(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
This is a contribution to the "Engaged utterance" column in Ny Tid 07.01.2011. In the column come various idealistic organizations are speaking. The participants are: ATTAC Norway, Nature and Youth, African Youth, Skeiv Ungdom, Changemaker, One World, The Future in Our Hands, Bellona, the Joint Council for Africa, the Norwegian Society for Nature Conservation, MSF.
Trade. The EU's need for, and hunting for, strategic raw materials is clearly communicated. Through bilateral free trade agreements, multilateral negotiations, diplomatic relations, aid programs and a dedicated commodity initiative, the EU aims to secure strategically important raw materials from resource-rich developing countries in Africa and South America.
A commodity initiative was launched by the European Commission in 2008. It emphasizes the EU's dependence on "strategically important raw materials". Specific measures such as export duties and restrictive investment rules are identified as the main problem in obtaining the strategic raw materials. Several resource-rich developing countries in Africa and South America are on the EU's list of areas with important resources.
The EU clearly states that they will use all the means available to secure the important raw materials. Micheal Theurer, a Member of the European Parliament, states that, in all bilateral trade negotiations and in the accession of new countries to the WTO, the EU must set conditions for the EU to have equal access to its resources as the country itself.
"The EU must develop a 'commodity diplomacy' that is part of all foreign policy," he told Business Europe, the NHO's European umbrella organization.
Included in this commodity diplomacy are not only negotiations on bilateral free trade agreements, but also EU funding. The European Council has explicitly asked the Commission and the Member States to use their aid programs to secure access to raw materials.
Several have criticized the EU's intensified commodity hunting. Among these are Friends of the Earth Europe, who in a 2009 note expresses strong concern for the European Commission's commodity initiative. They believe the strategy is both selfish, corporate and short-term.
A German report from November last year addresses two aspects in particular. The first is the EU's attempt to get developing countries to agree to remove export tariffs. Many developing countries use tariffs to secure local industry, increase government revenue or for environmental reasons. Despite the fact that the EU has recognized that export restrictions are part of several countries' development strategies, they still continue to promote the raw materials initiative.
The second is the EU's attempt to negotiate new investment rules that will give European companies access to raw materials from developing countries on the same, or better, terms than local business. This will make it difficult for the authorities in developing countries' opportunities to regulate investments that favor and build up local business.
The organizations behind the report believe that the EU Raw Materials Initiative will help increase global competition for raw materials and contribute to commodity conflicts, it will hinder developing countries' economic prospects by strengthening their dependence on exports of raw materials, and not least it will strengthen Europe's own dependence on raw materials. Europe is more dependent on imported resources than any other region in the world.
The EU's hard work to remove export tariffs on raw materials and to liberalize investment rules is facing strong opposition. From East Africa, we hear good news that trade unions, NGOs, farmers' organizations and business organizations from Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi are joining forces to fight the EU's anti-development "raw materials diplomacy".
Now they and the East African governments will probably have to prepare for ever harder pressure from the EU when the EU's need for strategically important raw materials has been so clearly communicated.
