Publications /
Policy Paper

Back
Assessing the EU-North Africa trade agreements
Authors
Yana Myachenkova
November 27, 2018

- The trade agreements that the European Union has with North African countries – with Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia – are often seen as having delivered disappointing results since they came into force during the 2000s. The four North African countries have seen insufficient growth in their exports to the EU, and have undergone only limited diversification. In the meantime, the EU’s exports to North Africa have grown quite rapidly.

- Economic growth in North Africa has been well short of what is needed to reduce chronic under-employment, especially of young people. The EU trade agreements with North Africa could generate additional, large benefits if they either directly led to or at least incentivised behind-the-border reforms to make the North African countries more competitive in international markets. Though this reform is the responsibility of the governments of North African countries, the EU could provide stronger incentives to improve the business environment. Meanwhile, in agriculture, were the North African countries able to compete with the EU on an even playing field, agriculture’s share of domestic value-added would almost certainly be significantly larger and rural poverty correspondingly lower than at present.

- Nevertheless, the agreements have been judged too harshly. They helped generate large amounts of trade, though not enough was done on the domestic front to derive the maximum benefit from them. Moreover, the domestic and international environment has been unfavourable, impeding North Africa’s progress. Over much of the relevant period, the EU grew sluggishly, and North African countries faced sharply increasing competition on European markets from China and the eastern Europe countries that joined the EU in 2004 and after. Generally, countries that acceded to the EU have done much better than the countries of North Africa. While the countries of North Africa are not EU candidates, there is much that they and the EU can learn from the example of the former accession countries in terms of how a new generation of trade agreements between the EU and North Africa could be deeper and more comprehensive than currently, and could be accompanied by increased aid for trade.

RELATED CONTENT

  • Authors
    August 29, 2023
    At the August 22-24 BRICS summit in Johannesburg, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa said they wanted to use more of their national currencies for cross-border payments, which are currently dominated by the U.S. dollar and other global convertible currencies. Like China and the other BRICS, several other countries have also sought to develop alternative external payment mechanisms. Pairs of countries have agreed to settle commercial and financial transactio ...
  • April 4, 2023
    Faced with the rise of cryptocurrencies, central banks are responding by launching their digital currencies. The purpose of this Policy Brief is to provide an update on the preparation of central bank digital currencies (CBDs) by monetary authorities, a process that concerns all emerging, developing, and more advanced countries. It is also about analyzing the conditions and some of the consequences (for banks, for financial inclusion, for the conduct of monetary policy...) of such a ...
  • April 4, 2023
    Face à l’essor des cryptomonnaies, les banques centrales sont en train de réagir en lançant leurs propres monnaies numériques. L’objet de ce Policy Brief est de faire le point sur la préparation des monnaies numériques de banques centrales (MNBC) par les autorités monétaires, un processus qui concerne tous les pays, émergents, en développement, et plus avancés. Il s’agit aussi d’analyser les conditions et certaines des conséquences (pour les banques, pour l’inclusion fin ...
  • Authors
    Selassie Tay
    February 15, 2023
    Background The African Union in 2018 agreed to implement the world’s second-largest free-trade area measured by number of countries, people, and geographical size, with the signing of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). This agreement will ultimately lead to a continent-wide free trade area consisting of 54 countries with 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion[1]. This equates to about 19%-20% of the GDP of the European Union and China, which are ...
  • Authors
    August 2, 2022
    L’invasion russe de l'Ukraine a incité l'Union Européenne, en coordination avec d’autres puissances mondiales, à monter en urgence une réponse coordonnée de sanctions sans précédent. La plus emblématique d'entre elles est l'embargo partiel contre le pétrole et autres produits raffinés russes, qui signifie en essence la transition du commerce pétrolier d’une logique économique vers une logique géopolitique. D'où la montée en flèche des cours du pétrole et d'autres matières premières. ...
  • Authors
    Moubarack Lo
    Amaye SY
    August 1, 2022
    Avant la pandémie Covid-19, le continent abritait les économies à la croissance la plus rapide du monde et plusieurs pays africains montraient les premiers signes de transformation structurelle et de progrès vers l’émergence économique. Plus de deux ans après la pandémie et les ondes de choc qui en ont résulté, deux questions cruciales se posent : dans quelle mesure le choc sanitaire Covid-19, exacerbé par la crise ukrainienne, a-t-il constitué un tournant dans le processus général ...
  • May 20, 2022
    Traders have worried that the war involving Russia and Ukraine could stoke inflation, further disrupt supply chains and derail the global economic recovery. Scarcity of food has led to ri ...
  • February 28, 2022
    The Russian-Ukrainian war will have major economic and political repercussions. In this note, we focus on the war’s economic short and long term implications on the African economy. This conflict comes at very arduous context, where Africa is still struggling to set its economy on the recovery path, amid global inflationary pressures and highly uncertain context. While natural resources countries, especially energy exporters, are sensing opportunities from the crisis, other countrie ...
  • February 28, 2022
    La guerre russo-ukrainienne aura des répercussions économiques et politiques dans les années à venir. Dans cette note, nous nous intéressons aux implications économiques de la guerre sur l’économie africaine à court et à long terme. Le conflit survient alors que l’Afrique s’efforce de mettre son économie sur la voie de la reprise, dans un contexte de pressions inflationnistes mondiales et de volatilité des marchés financiers et des matières premières. Alors que les exportateurs d’én ...