NORTH-SOUTH RELATIONS.
The Lome Convention - the existing EEC countries. Since then, taxes have risen from 27% of the GNP to 41% presently.
Within this overall rise, a consistent shifting of sections of society has oc-
Income tax (87% of which is curred.
from wages) has almost doubled paid since the early 1970s to 14% of the GDP a mechanism for today and indirect taxes on consumer goods increased in the same period from imperialist plunder
Thus, nearly four fifths
10% to 18%.
of taxes fall mainly on the workers and poor.
The overall level of taxation, given the
The second Lome Convention expires on March 1, 1985.
relative underdevelopment of Ireland, is will be an important period in discussions between the countries of the punitively high and the share borne by
EEC (European Economic Community) and the 63 African, Caribbean workers and their allies almost unbearand Pacific (ACP) countries which are linked by the EEC-ACP agreeable.
The latitude for extracting more
The renegotiation of the Lome pact has already run into trouble revenue by means of taxation is, thereover the demand by the ACP countries for a budget allocation of 5 bilfore, negligible.
lion US dollars - a 50 per cent increase for the next five-year period
With excessive foreign borrowing and fiscal excessive taxation, government
The following article, which analyses the functioning and real goal of policy is caught between two grinding the EEC-ACP agreement, is therefore particularly timely.
attempt to significantly
Any stones.
reduce external debt would cause a spiralling deflation - deflation, erosion of tax base and external reserves and further deflation. As against this, to increase or even maintain the existing level of taxation would risk serious political unrest and damage Ireland's credit rating thereby activating the balance of payments constraint inherent in the foreign debt.
The result would be equally deflationary.
The only way out is through a programme of massive cuts. There is a solid consensus between the two major bourgeois parties and the Labour Party on this. (3) But the type of deflation such a programme would necessitate, added to the social and economic crisis which already exists, has its own dangers.
Apart from the obvious economic dangers, there is a highly organised and combative working class to contend with - over 50% of Irish workers are unionised.
What the workers lack most is a political awareness of their own strength.
scale attempt to dismantle state involvement in the economy would undoubtedly lead to a questioning of the delicate political consensus on which the state rests.
That kind of fermentation in workers' consciousness is already apparent in the which emerged governmental instability from the last three general elections and work stoppages against the tax system in
1979, 1980 and 1981. (4) None of the politicians want to cut too deeply, too
None wants to be the first to feel the full might of workers' anger.
on top of economic instability, there is a growing political instability.
The Irish government is a coalition be-
Gael and the Labour Party.
latter has 17 members in parliament.
ulist 'nationalist' of the bourgeois parties has a greater support among workers.
some unions, including the Irish Transport and were strikes by workers, who pay tax under the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system, i.e., deduction from their wages.
very high - partly to finance the inducements offered to multinationals to set up in Ireland.
International Viewpoint 23 April 1984
(1985-89). Claude GABRIEL
The first agreement on trade and deAfrican, Caribbean and Pacific countries, was signed in Lome, the capital of Togo, on February 26, 1975. (1) At first sight the agreement, the most important of this type, seemed a natural extension of the entry of Britain, Denmark and Ireland into the EEC, decided in 1972 and ef-
As early as 1964, the first Yaounde convention had linked the EEC (then comprising the six founder members) to the 18 Associated African and Malagasy States (EAMA), in line with the provisions in the Treaty of Rome on cooperation with the third world'. This convention was renewed in July 1969; a nineteenth country, Mauritius, joined in 1973, and the convention expired on January 31, 1975.
Thus, the passage from the Yaounde convention to the wider Lome convention, was merely a by-product of British entry into the Common Market. From that point on, the countries of the Commonwealth had to be added to those of the EAMA. Previously, the EEC had been content with bilateral relations with certain African countries under British influence. Thus, the Lome Convention revealed the desire of the EEC countries to pool their respective colonial heritages. With the exception of Ethiopia and Liberia, all the ACP countries are former
Claude Cheysson, now minister for external affairs in the Mitterrand government, and then a member of the European Commission and one of the founding fathers of the Lome Convention, explained at the time, 'We have to recognise, shocking as it may be to many, that the possibilities for an industrialised coun try to contribute to the development of a 'third world' country are not the same in language, whose elites have passed through our universities, who
Thus, 1984 know our commercial system, our economic system, who have common points with our culture. There can be no doubt that there are incomparably greater possibilities for collaboration with them than with countries with a totally different culture.' (2)
When they signed the act approving British entry into the Common Market on January 22, 1972, the European ministers also set up a special mechanism which simultaneously offered a score of Commonwealth countries the possibility of economic agreements with the BEC. Britain thus brought a sort of dowry with her into the European marriage, although excluding the Asian Commonwealth countries. Noble ideals?
On the surface, the Lome Convention could claim to have put into practice certain noble ideals. It said good-bye to free trade nostrums, and formally established a readjustment of commercial relations in favour of the ACP coun tries — giving them a regular outlet for their exports on the European market and protection against fluctuations in their export earnings caused by the rise and fall of prices on the world market. At least, this was what was put forward as the principal innovative element in comparison with traditional international commercial practices. 1. The ACP countries today are: Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Republic of Central Africa, Chad, Comores, Congo, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Dominica, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, Upper Volta, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati. Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria. Papua/New Guinea, Rwanda, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Santa Lucia, Solomon, Western Samoa, Sao Tome e Principe, Senegal, Serinel, swaziland. Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Surinam, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zaire, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
Politique Europeenne de developpement. Chronique de politique etrangere, Brussels, 1974.
19
It should not be forgotten that the first neither Stabex nor the mineral products
The idea of non-reciprocity in commercial relations between industrialised and 'third world' countries to protect the trade of the latter is not completely new. It was proposed by the general assembly of the United Nations in December 1961, and then adopted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in
The principle was introduced in the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) regulations in 1965. But the EEC made an innovation by putting it into practice, although the principle of free and unlimited access to the European market was not extended to the products covered by the Common Agricultural policy (CAP) of the European countries (citrus fruit, cereals, beef and
'All industrial exports, and 96 per cent of agricultural exports from the ACP from now on enter the EEC free of tariffs or without agricultural levy....Even the remaining 4 per cent of products will be given preferential treatment by the Community, very much so — up to a 90 per cent re-
The Lome Convention also allowed for a relative flexibility in the definition of the origin of products and in the responsibility for commercial promotion of ACP products on the European market. The EEC agreed to consider ACP coun tries as one and the same territory for customs purposes, thus allowing them to treat as one the processing of a product in several ACP states. The Convention also set up a mechanism for stabilising the income from exports, called Stabex. This took the form - the details are outlined later - of a sort of compensatory payment when ACP countries
La drop in export income as a result of natural disasters.
Obviously, the EEC has no intention of limiting either the fluctuations of the world price for these products or of the speculations of international trade. Stabilisation here does not mean eliminating the fluctuations inherent in the functioning of the capitalist market but, more modestly, blunting the sharpest for the economies of the associated countries. (4)
For sugar, which is very often the single crop of the countries concerned, this system was coupled with a supplementary guarantee to buy a fixed predetermined amount, a system already in force within the Commonwealth. Leaving aside the specific case of sugar, the Stabex system itself applied to 44 products, mostly agricultural.
aspect of the Lome Convention concerned financial cooperation. There was nothing particularly new about it, since the Europeans were content to keep the aid distribution mechanisms of the European Development Fund (EDF) and the European Investment Bank (EIB), of which the Ten were members.
Finally, the fourth aspect of the Lome Convention was industrial cooperation. 20 signing of the Lome Convention occurred at the height of the oil price explosion. This set off a chain reaction in the economies and policies of the African coun tries that form the majority of the ACP non-petroleum producing countries saw their oil bill rise tremendously; this led to a desire to follow the example of the OPEC (organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) and demand a rise in the world prices for other raw materials as well as a transfer
Finally, they demanded ures were designed to obtain the necessurplus for 'national industrialisation' projects. Beginning of disenchantment
This was the period when so many international conferences talked so much of the 'new international economic order'. The United Nations General Conference on Industrial Development, held in Lima, Peru, in March 1975, only a few days after the Lome meeting, set a very ambitious target for industrial 'third world' countries: to supply at least 25 per cent of world manufacturing production by the year 2000, up from 7 per cent in 1975.
This worked out well for Europe because it coincided with the completion of a major transformation of the imperialist economies that had taken place in the 1960s and early 1970s. tion had hoisted monopolistic exporters of production and equipment goods to the top at the expense of the consumer goods sectors. Thus, 'industrial cooperation' between the EEC and ACP, including formal grants of financial aid, a policy and skill-training assistance programmes, was part of that this package deal seemed At the time, Senegal's minister Babacar Ba commented: Convention that has just been signed includes two decisively important facets: the export income stabilisation fund and industrial cooperation. I believe that these two aspects alone fully warrant calling the recently agreed convention revolutionary? (6)
The Convention was renewed on December 31, 1979 (Lome II). Some provisions of the agreement were amended, but without changing the general orientation and main goals of the original docu-
Nevertheless, despite the euphoric attitude that participants present to the public, ACP representatives were already beginning to let out some rather bitter remarks that were quite revealing. For instance, Bernard St John, representative of the Caribbean island of Barbados who made the closing speech, felt compelled to express a 'deep feeling of frustration' on behalf of all the ACP states.
He added: •We note with regret that system have answered many of our major concerns....Even in the field of mineral products, where some progress must be recorded, the main concerns of the ACP states are ignored. To these disappointments, alas, we must add yet another: the fact that the amount of aid represents, in real terms, a lesser contribution per capita than that granted by Lome I'
The fact is that the European rulers and their ACP partners had to tone down with which they initially acclaimed the convention, in light of a series of factors that had come into play 1979, most raw materials world commodity prices had collapsed and spectacularly deflated ACP countries' export in-
Neither the Stabex system nor its mineral products counterpart (Sysmin) had been able to adequately compensate these lost earnings. The economic crisis racking Europe had reduced the demand for basic
Finally, some European industries had gradually begun to use substitutes for the traditional primary products supplied by ACP countries, or had simply turned to other countries for supplies.
Now, in the midst of the new negotiations for the third convention - to replace Lome II when it expires on March 1, 1985 — no one will venture to refer to it is cooperation, a symbol of the new international economic order'
The way in which Stabex functions is a perfect illustration of why the basic commercial rules of the world capitalist market cannot be changed without overturning, at one and the same time, the structures of imperialist themselves. Stabex is an 'insurance' which is supposed to compensate ACP financial losses as a result of national catastrophes and, by extension, of sudden upsets in prices, demand on production. But the Europeans are more and more suspicious of the Stabex system because it is increasingly intervening, and on a larger and larger scale, to meet structural rather than conjunctural problems.
What happened is that from 1980 onwards, all the risks that had been foreseen began to accumulate simultaneously: drop in production, sales and world prices of commodities exported by the ACP. In 1980, the latter factor alone accounted for 23 per cent of the requests for compensation; in 1981 it climbed to 65 per cent. In the vast majority of cases, the problem was the result of the decline of
H.B. Krohn, director general of development and cooperation in the Common Market, Revue du Marche Commun, March 1975. 4. For a more precise idea of the dependency of certain countries on one sole export it should be known that sugar represents 68% of Mauritian CAPON coffee 69% for Ethiopia, cotton 47% for Mali and peanuts 37% for Senegal. 5. In the present negotiations for Lome III, the Europeans are totally opposed to the proposal of the ACP to extend this advantage to products other than sugar. 6. Le Courrier ACP, March 1975. 7. Idem, November 1979.
International Viewpoint 23 April 1984
two commodity prices: that of coffee
More concretely, the Stabex mechanism is capable of partially compensating the export revenue deficit of countries which export the commodities covered deficit-funding factors begin to occur simultaneously, the Stabex funds have to be considerably increased. of the deficit of countries submitting compensation requests is calculated on the basis of the average export earnings from the given commodity over the four previous years at the current price.
When commodity prices drop, this method further reinforces the relative value of the compensation, since the calculation is partly based on the previous higher, world prices. As a result, the EEC is sometimes compelled to play dumb when ACP countries submit compensation requests. In 1982, only 42.8 per cent of justified requests could be met. Lome Convention partners are only reflecting the natural laws of the world capitalist economy in this business. The Stabex system does not affect the fundamechanism, it only deals with some of its effects.
This trade adjustment system not only has to absorb the effects of international trade speculation and trends in demand. It is also obliged to subsidise the structural crisis of African agriculture (productivity lack of political means to influence the various markets, etc.). Moreover, a large part of the funds dispersed by Stabex to the ACP countries is not at all used to improve the productivity and product quality of the agricultural sec-
Most often, ACP governments assign these funds to public expenditure, and sometimes servicing their debts, in cases where without the financing from Stabex, the countries concerned would have been declared in de-
In the end, the European taxpayer who supplies the Stabex funds is not paying to aid African peasants, or even African economies, as claimed by official propaganda, but to compensate for certain destructive consequences of the capitalist market, and to keep the spendthrift and corrupt regimes of neocolonial countries afloat for the greater profit of the European trade and industrial monopolies. In the last analysis, these compensatory mechanisms serve to redistribute revenue within the dominated states for the benefit of the ruling classes and at the expense of the peasantry.
As mentioned earlier, the Lome Convention covers French, British and Belgian colonies. It is, therefore, no exaggeration to state that the European Community was seeking, by means of this agreement, to regroup and rationalise a series of common imperialist interests. Most EEC foreign trade is, of course, conducted with other industrialised countries International Viewpoint 23 April 1984
CONFERENCE NORD SUD - the ACP countries come in last among the commercial categories listed as part-
Nevertheless, for a number of reasons ACP countries have a special importance for European imperialist countries, which is, moreover, the reason for the existence of the Lome Convention.
EEC's degree of dependence on foreign sources for supplies of raw materials is about 75 per cent, as against 90 per cent for Japan and 15 per cent for the
Africa, excluding the Republic of South Africa, provides 20 per cent of the value of the EEC's non-energy raw materials imports. The African countries of the Lome Convention play a very important role in world production of certain
They are decisive in terms of long-term reserves. Zambia and Zaire are respectively the world's fourth and fifth producers for copper; Togo and Senegal for phosphates; second for third for manganese; Zimbabwe fifth for chromium; Zaire and Zambia first and second for cobalt; finally Zaire and Botswana are the two main producers of dia-
Other, non-African, Lome Convention members rank high in the list of world
Jamaica third, Surinam fourth and Guyana seventh.
the ACP's share of EEC imports stood at 50.08 per cent for oil, 13.3 per cent for minerals, 2.23 per cent for uranium; and, finally, 34.6 per cent
This brings out the importance of countries and Europe. ACP countries, on the basis of the unequal prices of the world market, with equipment goods, technology and services, in exchange for raw materials, most often only slightly processed.
The European multinationals motivation in ACP countries is not primarily the search for cheap labour or immediate outlets. Rather, as shown by Table 1 - for the purposes of this demonstration the ACP countries are grouped with Africa — their main objective in this continent is controlling sources of raw materials. Clearly then, these countries' economies are decisively affected by the pumping out of classical colonial super-profits by the multinationals.
Moreover, EEC-financed aid and development programmes constitute a substanfor European capitalists. The EEC provides the funds and imperialist private corporations get the contracts for the projects. The EEC has provided about 10 billion French franes (1981 figure) per year for the financing of projects actually implemented on the spot in countries, 58 percent of which have been assigned to ACP coun-
Development' projects originating in such programmes are approximately evenly distributed in agriculture first, industry, mines and energy second, and transports, communications and services third. One should emphasise the importance of large-scale regional development projects that usually require massive financing, which is usually provided jointly by the EDF and EIB, and other international finance bodies. Behind the 'aid': profit
During the term of the first Lome Convention (1975 to 1979), projects of this type, costing a total of 24 billion French francs, were jointly
36 per cent), Arab (16 per cent) and World Bank (12 per cent) funds.
Over the same period, actual EEC aid made it possible to build, for example, 4,500 kilometres of paved roads, schools, etc. But these large projects
Moreover, in the negotiations for Lome surveillance role over the allocation of Stabex in order to intervene in local agricul-
are put together by issuing an internationEEC and ACP firms, and, in the end, the bulk of profits realised find their way back into the pockets of European big
The only formal provision for preferential treatment of local ACP firms concerns projects whose dimensions are not likely to interest foreign competitors.
INVESTMENTS BY MULTINATIONALS
ACCORDING TO THEIR STRATEGY
Latin America tion of the workforce. C: Opening of new
But, one should remember that even
ACP firms get cent of the construction contracts, 9 percent of supply contracts and 13 per cent of services contracts financed by the BEC — which is far from a raving success - in many of the local' firms in these countries imperialist capital predominates
The Lome Convention is a typical example of how public and multinationals financing can combine for the benefit of capitalist firms operating in neocolonial
By means of a slightly intricate detour through the channels of the EEC's Brussels bureaucracy and of the ACP states, the European taxpayer's 'aid' to
'third world' is ever-so-prosaically transformed into profit Moneybags of imperialism. business is a swindle, despite the many official speeches by successive presidents and governments, especially the French, who have now posed as patrons of the 'third world' year in, year out for the last 25 years. (10)
Another aspect of the much-touted "industrial cooperation' is that it draws the dominated countries into regularly increasing their purchases of the various services sold by the European imperialist powers (insurance, banking, accounting, brokerage, architecture, legal operations, telecommunications, and technological know-how). serves to reproduce yet again the mechanisms of dependence.
This financial manna also provides, at a modest level, one of the most visible of imperialist mostly entrepreneurs, managers or of the tion produces severe imbalances in neocolonial economies, even if only in the import of consumer goods and luxury
But it is the local populations who suffer the inflationary effects of promoting the flow of European trade towards their countries. (11)
While the Lome Convention is a contractual relationship for five years between ten European countries and, tosixty-three poor and dominated countries, it also constitutes a form of contract between the European countries
The competition between the different EEC countries is no less sharp on this front than it is between the EEC and ACP countries
To simplify it to the bare bones: for France and Belgium, the objective is to get the other European countries to share the expenditure necessary for them to maintain their own domination, by using Community funds for operations in the ACP countries.
For the other countries, particularly Italy and Germany, their objective is to overcome their lag in this domaine and use the framework of the Community to the private preserves of the main former colonial powers.
The present renegotiation of the Lome Convention is thus the subject of much European partners. The respective trade balances of the EEC countries with the ACP countries, as well as the share of contracts landed by their own companies, constitute the barometer of the balance of forces between the components of
The adoption of the Lome Convention in 1975 reflected an evolution in the relationship of forces between the Euro-
The unequal distribution of the cake is at the centre of all the
While in 1972 the share of the ACP countries in France's own exports (apart from Community operations) was 11.2 per cent, it rose to 13.5 per cent in 1977. France's share in the overall dealings of the EEC with the ACP countries went from 28 to 29.7 per cent in the same period, while Britain, which had 30.9 per cent before the Lome agreement, fell to 25.6 per cent in 1977.
The big winner on the EEC-ACP pact was West Germany, whose share in EECACP trade shot from 14.3 per cent to 20.2 per cent between 1972 and 1911.
The markets created by the financial intervention of the EDF, which are divided into "construction projects', plies' and "technical co-operation', are also the object of hard competition. France is presently on top, with 28.5 per cent of the total (31.5 per cent in the
The Impact of Transnational Enterprises Y. Sabolo, R. Traitenberg, BIT, Geneva, 1976.
Jacques Perrin in Les Transferts de Technologie, Maspero, Paris, 1978.
the European Court of Accounts underlines that for many works carried framework of EDF: table fact that the finished product is often badly conceived for local needs, the are too big, the wells are not fitted with pumps
Pete. This is what we call generous aid. (See Marches Tropicaux et Mediterraneens, names from EuroDe Africa are, among others, Brooke Bond Liebig.
'supply' sector alone) for the "5th EDF
For the "4th EDF, presently in op eration, of all the deals struck by Sep tember 30, 1983, France had won 23 per Italy 11.59 per cent, Britain 9.72 per cent Belgium 5.72 per cent, the Netherlands 4.03 per cent, Denmark 0.65 per cent per cent, Luxembourg 0.25 per cent, while Greece is not part of the '4th EDF.
After the formal independence granted to many African states in the 1960s and the setting up of neocolonial states, it was impossible for the colonial powers to maintain near-monopoly over commercial exchanges, such as existed during the colonial period.
The expected growth, even if only in the market for producers goods, in any event required opening these regions to imperialist competition, and to involving other capitalists in exploiting them. The pooling of a minimum basis for collaboration in Europe was thus necessary, given the great vulnerability of the European countries in relation to the United States and, today, to Japan, since the latter are also looking with greedy eyes at new openings in zones that were once firmly closed. No 'European imperialism' therefore needed to introduce common rules to rationalise and defend themselves all to say that there is an identity between the specific interests of the EEC
The EEC-ACP agreements rather constitute a framework for controlling inter-European competition in
Insofar as the big development projects in the ACP countries play an ever more important role for capitalist industry in the metropolitan countries, the states and the national governments are the direct prospecting agents. This is all the more so as the capital sums required their realisation participation of public financing bodies and protection of investments.
government in the Europe of the Ten thus has to go it alone in the
Therefore, political neocolonial regimes constitute a guarantee and assurance in the face of competition. Britain, and France Cadbury Schweppes. du Sud-Ouest for France and East Asiatic for profits that these enterprises make from dealing in raw materials only intervenes to support the market system
For near-monopoly in buying basic Tate and Lyle - which has a monopbuys almost all the cane sugar imported by the EEC and controls almost 40% of the world market in sugar molasses.
International Viewpoint 23 April 1984
in particular, benefit from the political control of dominated economies at the expense of their other European partners. In some ways they are holding onto the advantages of colonialism.
This each for their own' approach is demonstrated in the following fact: while the EEC is the foremost provider of aid to the 'third world' (12.1 billion dollars in 1981), 88 per cent of this sum is dispensed in bilateral aid by the different countries separately. Direct aid in itself was only 1.7 billion dollars, less than half of which was given in the framework of the Lome Convention.
Thus this convention is not the expression of a 'European imperialism'. most it is the reflection of a desire to adapt politically and economically to the evolution in the world relationship of forces and international trading relations in the last twenty years, a palliative for the congenital chaos of capitalism.
This panorama would be incomplete if we failed to point out that it is not just any country that is linked to the EEC by the convention. Of the sixty-three contries in question, twenty-five are according to the criteria of the World Bank *Least Developed Countries'. This is out of the thirty-six so classified in the
This is a very curious 'egalitarian' association around the Lome Conven-
On one side are ten countries, including some of the major imperialist countries in the world. And on the other are the so-called 'favoured' partners, whose chief characteristic is that they are among the poorest dominated countries in the world.
The world economic crisis has indeed aggravated the difficulties of these poor International Viewpoint 23 April 1984 countries. Thus, the World Bank considers that, in the framework of the most optimistic hypothesis — an annual growth rate of 5 per cent for the industrialised countries from 1985 to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per inhabitant of the African countries to the south of the Sahara will only regain its 1970 level in 1995!
While the literacy rate for all low-income third world' countries taken as a whole is 51 per cent, for the ACP countries it is 28 per cent. Life expectancy is 57 years for the former and 47 for the almost all countries that signed the Lome Convention EEC are extremely fragile economically and socially. Their state apparatuses are usually weak and debilitated by generalised corruption (as shown by a wide array of examples such as Chad, Zaire,
They are ruled by political regimes which are always repressive and sometimes bloody dictatorships. plagued by bloated but inefficient bu-
Their instability derives as much from the regimes' lack of legitimacy as from the lack of a stable ruling
Under these circumstances, the aim of the Lome Convention, as of all relations between Europe and these countries, is to prop up collapsing economies and sick-
The ultimate goal of these 'preferential' relations is to maintain political order. In the end Europe -and imperialism in general - profit from the specific relations that keep these countries afloat, artificially if one subscribes to the liberal prejudices about the capitalist market. What future for children of the Third World? (DR)
It is quite interesting to note that Angola and Mozambique which are tottering on the verge of economic and military catastrophe are currently negotiating their entry into the Lome convention. This convention obviously exists to keep from collapse a neocolonial Africa, whose economic and social disintegration is the consequence of the colonial legacy and European plunder. This is, so to speak, the arsonist doubling as the fire fighter.
In order to hold more bargaining chips in the negotiations on the renewal of the Lome Convention, the Europeans have put the question of 'human rights' on the list of conditions required of countries receiving aid.
This episode is a good illustration of the paternalism that governs the dependency relations of these countries. This when you realise that it is precisely this situation of domination which has generated dictatorships and authoritarian regimes in these dominated countries. conceive how countries like France which has militarily occupied Chad and has propped up dictatorial regimes for years - can use such arguments.
It would be quite another matter if the European powers stopped equipping and training the armies and police in these states, and if governments claiming to speak for the workers, as in France now, or Britain at the time the Lome Convention was first signed, began by withdrawing their troops... Profit rules
As a matter of fact, on January 5 Thomas Okelo-Odongo, general secretary of the ACP countries, reminded the imperialist rulers that the Europeans were in no position to give ACP governments lessons in 'human dignity, human welfare'. Along with this, he said that the ACP group believes that the European interpretation of human rights is limited to civic and political consideration....This is why the ACP are opposed to writing into the Convention clauses concernine human rights] which in fact deny certain states access to development aid.
But all that is a mere formalistic flour-
European Commissioner for Development, Edgard Pisani, reassured everybody on September 16, 1983, by stating that the EEC should respect the ACP's own conceptions of human rights. (13) Habre, and others of their ilk should
However, the fact that democratic rights only enter the picture as an aside is quite revealing of the real basically "commercial' philosophy governing relations between the EEC and the ACP. This far outweighs all the hot air about 'transfers of technology' and the 'new international economic order'. 12. Marches Tropicaux and Mediterraneens, Paris, November 25, 1983.
23
Women