EU sugar trade blackmail

The following comes from the Mauritius Times linked here:

The ACP countries which are signatories to the existing EU-ACP Sugar Protocol (SP) are being asked to renounce the current guarantees of the Sugar Protocol -- market access for agreed quantities for an indefinite duration, annually negotiated guaranteed prices and a special legal status.

In return, what they are being offered is enhanced market access opportunities -- but without country quotas, for a short-lived period, at unspecified lower non-guaranteed prices, and at a lower return per tonne.

After an assessment of the EU offer at the ACP Special Ministerial Conference on sugar in Fiji and at the ACP Ministerial Council comprising the 79 ACP States in May 2007, the ACP responded to the Commission to state that the EU offer "is tantamount to a unilateral renunciation of the Sugar Protocol and as such it is totally unacceptable."

In reply, the Commission has threatened a �unilateral denunciation of the Sugar Protocol� should the SP countries not agree �on jointly renouncing the Protocol and integrating sugar into Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The triumphalistic EU, fresh from its scheming to rob Europeans of their democracies, now returns to another of its preferred policies of grinding the faces of the poor into the dirt. We blogged on the outrageous trade practices over sugar subsidies on Ironies way back in in April 2004 here, May 2004 here and here and again that same August linked here when we reported and linked that these practices had been declared illegal by the WTO, what would that matter to an organisation such as the noxious EU, ways around legality or freely expressed democratic opposition will always be found as witness the EU Reform Treaty. Now it appears that the poor former colonies of Britain, France and Portugal are being picked out for particular vilification.