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Africa's trade unions called on their governments to nullify the interim trade agreements they have signed with the European Union, saying they leave African nations "weak" within the global market.

"We join the call for the nullification of the interim EPAs and for appropriate time to be given for negotiating new trade relations between Africa and Europe that take account of Africa's genuine needs for development and regional integration," said International Trade Union Confederation-Africa (ITUC-Africa) secretary general Kwasi Adu-Amankwah on Thursday (1 May), according to a report by AFP.

The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) signed between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries are an attempt to establish free trade between Europe and developing nations. The agreements follow on from criticism by the WTO of earlier preferential trade agreements with ACP countries as incompatible with WTO rules and are due to take effect this year.

A number of African countries signed interim EPAs late last year, but the ITUC-Africa – the regional grouping of the global trade union central – worries that the agreements favour European businesses at the expense of their developing nation counterparts.

"African nations come out as weak partners, subject to neo-liberal dictates of international financial institutions and their accompanying trade rules established by WTO," said Mr Adu-Amankwah.

The call comes on the heels of criticism of the EPAs as detrimental to Southern countries by two leading development NGOs.

At the twelfth UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Ghana, which concluded its proceedings on 25 April, both Oxfam and the World Development Movement urged the EU to give a rethink to its trade deals with developing countries.

The two groups presented analyses of the EU's bilateral trade agreements, which concluded that the agreements would undermine development throughout the global south.

Mouhamet Lamine Ndiaye, a campaigner with Oxfam said: "Our analysis shows that these deals have strayed far from the development template they were supposed to follow. The cost will be enormous: annual losses from tariff cuts of €230 million for Africa alone, and a further €9bn for compliance for all the countries involved.

"Not to mention the loss of independent trade policy, badly needed to promote development and protect livelihoods," he added.

The group warns that developing countries have been granted very limited scope to retain any protection and they have had to use it for agricultural products on which the EU still pays big subsidies.

Also at the UNCTAD meeting, the UK-based development charity World Development Movement issued a report analysing two existing EU bilateral trade agreements, with South Africa and Mexico, claiming they were leading to increased poverty in the countries.

The agreement signed with Mexico means that the country can no longer regulate the proportion of foreign shareholdings in banks. According to WDM's report, this has meant that the Mexican banking sector has become dominated by a few foreign banks, which in turn has resulted in reduced access to credit for small and medium-sized companies and small farmers.

In the agreement signed with South Africa, argues the report, the EU agreed to cut tariffs on just 25 per cent of the goods South Africa actually exports to the EU while South Africa cut tariffs on 40 per cent of the goods the EU exports to South Africa.

Africa's trade unions want EU trade agreements scrapped