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Free, Prosperous & Resilient Pacific Communities
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Frequently asked questions
The EU Pacific Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) was ratified by the EU Parliament in 2009. At this stage, it covers trade in goods only.
It provides duty-free and quota-free market access for Pacific exporters on all products. The Pacific parties are allowed to protect their sensitive products and industries by maintaining tariffs at the border. However, depending on how each Party member state negotiated its market access offer to the EU, there's a time period of 15 - 20 years to slowly reduce these tariffs to zero.
There's also a unique market access provision called global sourcing on fisheries exports that is given only to the Pacific region. In a standard trade agreement, the two parties would restrict the sourcing of raw materials from third parties to promote the maximisation of the trade benefits or advantages between and among the parties themselves.
However, in the EPA, the EU allows the Pacific parties to source raw fish from outside of the Pacific and EU countries, process them onshore and then export them to the EU duty-free and quota-free. The objective is to attract foreign investment into the Pacific parties to set up manufacturing and processing facilities, increase employment opportunities and improve livelihoods for Pacific families, increase tax revenues for governments to provide better public services, and grow the economy.
There are four Pacific parties to the EPA. They are Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and the Solomon Islands.
Five more have formally notified the EU of their intention to accede to the EPA. They are Tonga, Timor Leste, Tuvalu, Niue and Vanuatu.
A few more are also in the process of undertaking a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) undertaken by the SPIRIT project to facilitate the sovereign national processes leading to the formal notification to the EU on their accession to the EPA and the subsequent submission of their Market Access Offer (MAO).
The EU – Pacific EPA opens up trade in goods with the EU. The agreement includes
duty-free and quota-free access to the EU market for all goods coming from EPA Pacific states
asymmetric and gradual opening of their markets to EU goods, taking full account of differences in levels of development and sensitive sectors
exclusion of some sensitive sectors and products from liberalization on the Pacific side
the possibility of Pacific States to reintroduce duties and quotas if imports from the EU disturb or threaten to disturb their local economies
rules on technical barriers to trade and sanitary and phytosanitary measures to help Pacific exporters meet EU import standards
efficient customs procedures and enhanced co-operation between administrations
improved rules of origin for processed fisheries products from the Pacific - the so-called "global sourcing" provision which is intended to boost job creation and development in the region.
There are four existing Pacific parties to the EPA. They are Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and the Solomon Islands.
As of April 2023, five more countries (Tonga, Timor Leste, Tuvalu, Niue and Vanuatu) have formally written to the EU in Brussels, Belgium, to convey their intention to accede to the EPA.
The SPIRIT project is working closely with the four parties to implement the EPA and realise the expected trade and development related benefits of the Agreement and the five observers in their national preparedness processes to accede to the EPA. This includes increasing awareness among government officials, the private sector or economic operators, and other non-state actors. Further, the observers' trade and investment laws also need to reviewed and amended, where necessary to ensure that these are fit for purpose for these countries to effectively trade under the EPA.
The Pacific region is one of the three sub-regions of the Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS), formerly the ACP, which was founded under the Georgetown Agreement in 1975. The partnership between the 79 members of the OACPS, on the one hand, and the 27 members of the EU, on the other, has its legal basis under the Cotonou Agreement, revised from its Lome Conventions in the earlier years. The OACPS and the EU are currently negotiating a successor partnership Agreement to the Cotonou Agreement - the Samoa Agreement, which aims to build on a transformative, modern partnership Agreement that will serve as a multilateral platform for political dialogue and economic and social cooperation. The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) replace the Trade Chapter of the Cotonou Agreement (and its successor Agreement).
The term, Pacific-ACP states (PACPS) is derived from this historic partnership in the context of its alliance with the other two sub-regions in the Caribbean and Africa under the OACPS and, more importantly, the OACPS' collective partnership with the EU under the current Cotonou Agreement.
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