The EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements and the 'Development Question': Constraints and Opportunities Posed by Article XXIV and Special and Differential Treatment Provisions of the WTO

This article argues that Article XXIV and special and differentialtreatment (SDT) provisions of the WTO present a number of constraintsand opportunities to the design and scope of the proposed economicpartnership agreements between the European Union (EU) and African,Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. It examines the negotiatingpositions of both sides to argue that were the EU's positionto prevail, ACP and other developing countries would likelysuffer an ‘erosion of the development principles’embedded within the WTO. It is shown that the differences betweenthe two groups over the desirability and/or applicability ofnegotiating free trade agreements between developed and developingcountries under the ‘strict’ jurisdiction of ArticleXXIV, and of negotiating agreements on services and the ‘SingaporeIssues’, amount to a contestation over the principlesof reciprocity and SDT within the WTO, and of the scope of theWTO.