[DR1] Lack of inter-regional understanding

[NewsWhore]

In his 28 May column, David Jessop, director of the Caribbean Council, the Caribbean specialist consultancy group, writes about the problems created by the multiplicity of identities in the Caribbean and the challenges that need to be overcome in the short term. He says the lack of inter-regional understanding, in great part due to the differences in languages and lack of information sharing are now about to clash with European Union expectations, especially now that the timing for the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) under the Cotonou agreement is drawing close. He forecasts that decisions to be taken in Santo Domingo, and to date the indecision in the English-speaking Caribbean, may change the political and economic shape of the region. "Within these differing positions the Dominican Republic has been seeking to clarify its status within Cariforum for the purposes of the EPA negotiations and its future regional economic relationships. It also believes that it has an important political and economic role to play in the region with Latin neighbors and can bring critical mass to the Caribbean's global presence by enlarging both the political and economic space of the region," he writes.


Meanwhile, the European Union is requiring a definition of which nations constitute the region. Jessop adds: "Europe favors an arrangement that is all embracing. It wants a single agreement that relates it to all of the nations of Cariforum within a single customs union. That is to say one that brings together the independent Anglophone Caribbean and Haiti (Caricom) with the Dominican Republic and in some as yet unspecified way, the Overseas Territories of Britain and Holland and the French Overseas Departments."


See http://www.caribbean-council.org/week.in.europe.article.asp?WIE=59

Link To Original Article (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#11)