Dr Maurice Odle reflects on Caribbean’s failure in European markets

Dr Maurice Odle, the former Special Economic Advisor to the CARICOM (Caribbean Community), reflected on the failure of the Caribbean nations in the European markets. He shared his observations during the launch event of his Autobiography on Wednesday, 11 September.

The book, detailing the life and experiences of Dr Maurice Odle is titled as ‘An Eventful Life.’ In his words, he discussed the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) 2008 between the European Union and CARIFORUM.

Under the agreement, the member Caribbean nations were granted easy access to tap into the market of European nations. He recalled, during the launch event for his autobiography at Moray House that it is very challenging for the Caribbean nations to take over the European Union market.

Dr Maurice Odle said, “That is still proving to be difficult for the Caribbean, partly because we do not have the capacity to penetrate those markets. Our strength really lies in the services sector, and there is a lot of difficulty in gaining access to the European market.”

The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the officials from both parties was signed on 15 October 2008. The review of the first five year term after the agreement was published on 14 July 2015, while the second review of the next five years is overdue.

As Dr Maurice Odle spent a large chunk of his life as an Economic Advisor and served the CARICOM, his autobiography will also focus on several events related to the subject. While sharing some glimpses of the topics touched on in his 283-page autobiography, he talked about EPA and CARIFORUM.

Odle addressed that the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) came up with many concessions and waivers for the Caribbean nations and their investors. However, the agreement was not sufficiently non-reciprocal, which meant that the regions were not able to take good advantage of this fact.

As per the expert, the agreement was very unbalanced and did not serve the interests of both sides. The uneven setup disclosed the far-reaching difference in the capacities of the European stakeholders and Caribbean partners.

Maurice Odle said that the step of separate negotiation was not in the best interest of the Caribbean region. In the ‘CARICOM External Negotiations (1997-2008)’ chapter of his autobiography, he talked about the matter in detail.

He wrote, “Besides allowing itself to be forced to enter EU negotiations jointly with the Dominican Republic (with which it hitherto had very little contact), the strategy of the Caribbean entering separate negotiations with the EU, rather than jointly with its long-standing Africa and Pacific partners of the ACP grouping, probably made for reduced bargaining power.”

Dr Maurice Odle also stated, “The benefits derived from the 2008 Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe have so far been very disappointing partly because of the inherently unequal/unlevel nature of the playing field.”