ABSTRACT
In 2002, the European Union (EU) announced that it had reviewed its trade relations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) regions and had decided to constitute a new set of free trade agreements with these countries through a fresh round of negotiations. According to the EU, the trade negotiations, dubbed Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), have been designed to address concerns by the World Trade Organization (WTO) that previous trade agreements between the EU and selected developing states violated the WTO’s fundamental principles of reciprocity and non-discrimination in international trade relations. These principles are contained in Article 1 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which partly states that ‘any advantage, favor, privilege or immunity granted by any contracting party to any product originating in or destined for any other country shall be accorded immediately and unconditionally to the like product originating in or destined for the territories of all other contracting parties’. 1
