BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Caribbean trade and political officials are fuming at the European Union’s decision last Friday to scrap a 32-year-old agreement with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) sugar-exporting countries, describing the action as “a slap in the face” of the region.

A leading Caricom official who preferred not to be named, said Saturday that it was “most insensitive” for the EU to have gone ahead with its earlier threat to terminate the sugar protocol on Friday, given that top EU representatives would be attending an emergency meeting with Caribbean leaders in a few days in Jamaica to grapple, “in good faith”, with outstanding development and trade issues.

Those issues are the realisation of six regional Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) from 2009 for which intense negotiations have been taking place at technical, diplomatic and ministerial levels between the EU and ACP.

Guyana’s Foreign Trade and International Co-operation Minister Henry Jeffrey, who is Caricom’s principal spokesman on sugar, said not only was it an insult for the EU to have unilaterally “denounced” the sugar protocol, which has been a key pillar of ACP/Europe co-operation, it was also “an absurdity” for the EU to have asked the ACP countries to join them in a collective denunciation of the sugar agreement.

According to Jeffrey, the EU decision-makers are aware of the ACP’s strong opposition to a “rushed approach” in the scrapping of the sugar protocol “with outstanding issues of significance” yet to be resolved on new economic relations between Europe and its former colonies in the 79-member ACP.

This week’s crucial two-day meeting in Montego Bay, which is scheduled to start on Thursday, was originally planned as a special session of CARIFORUM leaders to expedite the negotiating process for the EPAs.

CARIFORUM is the trade alliance between the Caribbean Community and the Dominican Republic.

When it was learnt that the EU commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, Louis Michel, and his colleague Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson were keen on travelling to Montego Bay to meet with CARIFORUM heads of government,

arrangements were hastily put in place in co-operation with the Jamaica Government of Prime Minister Bruce Golding.

Since the focus, as originally planned, was to be on the region’s external trade and economic relations, Prime Minister Golding, as current chairman of Caricom’s Prime Ministerial Sub-committee on those issues, would be chairing the two-day meeting.

A working document, prepared by the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM), will be a key instrument in the strategy to be pursued at the Montego Bay meeting, according to official sources. The CARIFORUM leaders will have a caucus among themselves ahead of their meeting on Friday with the EU’s commissioners for development and trade.

The Caricom Secretariat said it could not confirm how many heads of government would be present, but among those expected, given the importance of the issues for discussions, would be Barbadian Prime Minister Owen Arthur, current chairman of the Community, and President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana.

Prime Minister Patrick Manning of Trinidad and Tobago is likely to miss the meeting as he is currently deeply involved in his ruling party’s preparation for the coming November 5 general election and for which nomination of candidates is scheduled for October 6.