Post Lomé negotiations were completed on February 3, The Dominican Republic is the country that has most benefitted from the Lomé trade and aid program implemented by the European Union to benefit its former colonies. The new version is expected to manage 25,000 million Euros. The new partnership arrangement to replace the Lomé Convention is expected to be signed in Fiji, in May. It will regulate most of the region’s relations with the European Union and the 71 Africa, Caribbean and Pacific states for years to come. The new agreement places great emphasis on the delivery of development through the private sector and contains a range of new funding provisions, which will create a more substantial role for enterprise in national and regional development," explains David Jessop, of the Caribbean Council for Europe. He believes that the agreement will "change the Caribbean’s history and over time, alter forever the relationship between former colonies and the metropolitan powers." The agreement calls for special declarations of support for rum and rice, the extension of the existing sugar protocol, a new banana protocol and language on tourism. For an eight-year transitional period, ACP states will give up their preferential trade agreements with Europe and substitute these with structures based on World Trade Organization rules. "No one should be under any illusion about the implications of this," says Jessop. "By agreeing to alter the nature of the trade relationship with Europe the region has accepted that within a relatively short period it has to be economically independent. It has also accepted implicitly that in a WTO-led world it will have to survive on the basis of real integration and a much broader relationship with Europe, the Americas and other powerful nations and blocs."
