Fiona Hall welcomes European Parliament moving closer to fairer deal on trade

2.30.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 30th Mar 2009

Lib Dem MEP for the North East Fiona Hall has welcomed improvements to the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.

Said Fiona: "Many people have contacted me to express their concerns about EPAs, which were supposed to help developing countries but had been turned by hard-nosed Commission officials into instruments to protect EU trade.

The European Parliament today gave its assent to the full Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the Caribbean (CARIFORUM) states and the 'stepping stone' EPA with Ivory Coast and gave their opinion on other interim regional EPAs that are being negotiated.

Commenting on the EPAs, Fiona said:

"In the European Parliament, I have been calling for the Commission to show more flexibility and to look again at several contentious issues that need to be renegotiated. After years of Lord Mandelson's failure to listen when he was Trade Commissioner, I welcome Commissioner Ashton's more common sense approach.

"But I am still concerned that the deals on the table include negotiations on liberalising financial services. Western countries failed to regulate properly the big international banks operating on their own territories. So you have to ask if it is really wise to open up the banking sector in countries where there is little or no regulatory regime in place."