Aquino pressed on RP-EU trade pact OK

President-elect Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III is being pressed to submit the approved Philippine-European Union Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) to the Philippine Senate for deliberation after officials of the Philippine government and the EU recently finalized the content of the bilateral trade agreement.

The militant fisherfolk alliance Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas’ (Pamalakaya) vice chairman Salvador France yesterday said the Aquino administration should follow the legal and constitutional processes required in sealing bilateral treaties with other nations such as the free trade agreement with the EU.

“The treaty requires the full-blown deliberation and the concurrence of 16 senators of the incoming Philippine Senate. Mr. Aquino should not misrepresent the RP-EU bilateral pact as an executive agreement to escape Senate debate, approval or rejection,” France said.

EU Ambassador to the Philippines Alistair MacDonald said the new trade agreement is expected to be initialed within this month and the official signing will be on September or October once the PCA text is translated into 22 other languages of the member-countries of the EU.

The negotiations for the RP-EU trade pact, which lasted about 18 months, seeks to further advance the bilateral cooperation between the Philippines and EU in many of issues, including, but not limited to, political, security, counter-terrorism, trade and investment, development cooperation, education and culture, energy, transport, migration and human rights.

The Philippines is only the second Southeast Asian country to complete negotiations on an updated PCA with the EU.

The EU last year forged a bilateral trade pact with Indonesia which was signed last November. The EU is also in the process of signing similar agreements with Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore.

France, though, said it was questionable why the Filipino nation was being kept in the dark on the content of the RP-EU trade pact by the Arroyo administration.

According to him, it was only the EU which had drafted the agreement and the Philippine government merely obtained a copy of it on Feb. 1, 2006.

“If this is a joint partnership agreement, how come the content of the agreement is made and decided by only one party to the agreement, which is the EU? Is this really a partnership agreement or an imposition from the powerful EU bloc,” France said.

He said there were efforts by some militant lawmakers to secure a copy of the partnership agreement but such efforts proved futile.

“If our memory serves us right, Rep. Satur Ocampo of Bayan Muna requested the office of (Foreign Affairs) Secretary Alberto Romulo for documents regarding the ongoing negotiations between the Arroyo government and the European Commission (EC), but his request was denied,” France said.

He said the Philippine government and the Senate are compelled by law to study the pact.

“The Aquino administration and the 23 senators are constitutionally bound, legally mandated, politically and morally obliged to look into the impact and consequences of the PCA, which is currently being syndicated among top officials of Malacañang and the European Commission,” he stressed.

France moreover asserted that the Senate should not be caught flat-footed as in the case of the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement, or Jpepa, where the Senate, the ratifying body, was kept in the dark in the early stages of the negotiations and was compelled to seal the agreement despite Jpepa’s all-out violation of Philippine national interest and the 1987 Constitution.

“If Jpepa is a nightmare, the RP-EU partnership and cooperation pact is an across-the-nation tragedy that will soon hit this nation of impoverished and starving people. The real agenda of the EU in orchestrating this biggest sellout of the century is to pass the burden of their economic and global crisis to the downtrodden people of the Third World, like the Philippines,” he said.

Last Feb. 19, Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Edsel Custodio issued a department statement dated Feb. 9, 2009, on the draft RP-EU PCA, which was submitted by the EC on Nov. 21, 2006.

Custodio said the Philippines had received from the EC the initial draft of the PCA on Feb. 1, 2006. At that time, the PCA, consisted of two separate framework agreements: The main PCA document and the political elements on weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and the ICC.

In May 2006, President Arroyo had met with then-EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and expressed the Philippines’ keenness on pursuing negotiations after thorough evaluation by the agencies of the Philippine government. In accordance with this directive, the Department of Foreign Affairs established the inter-agency process on the PCA.

Since then, Custodio said, the draft underwent further revisions by the EC. The second revised PCA draft dated Nov. 21, 2006, merged the two separate agreements of Feb. 1, 2006, into one omnibus PCA. This version underwent a lengthy but thorough inter-agency process of over two years and involved around 30 agencies and offices of the Philippine government.

Inter-agency deliberations continued throughout much of 2007. Some issues, particularly the nature and rationale behind the PCA and its relation to the regional free-trade agreement, emerged that required further discussion. For this reason, the DFA and the EC held the first informal consultations on the draft PCA on Sept. 24, 2007.

Inter-agency discussions intensified in frequency and deepened in analysis in 2008. The number of agencies involved in the PCA increased, while some sub-clusters were consolidated due to the interrelatedness and cross-cutting nature of certain provisions. –Charlie V. Manalo, Daily Tribune