WHILE Caribbean Community leaders met this week in Suriname to discuss, among other issues, climate change, agriculture and food security, regional transport and travel, and the impact of global shocks on the region, there remains a concern that the move to regional integration has stalled, if not progressing as steadily as expected.

Prime Minister of Grenada Dickon Mitchell, the newest elected head of Government in the region, was strident in his address at the 43rd Regular Meeting of the Conference of Caricom Heads of Government, during which he called on the regional intergovernmental organisation to be more than a talk shop.

“For too long this Caribbean Community that we all love has been seen and viewed as a place where we talk, and talk, and talk and then we talk some more, and to what end, Mr Chairman,” he asked.

“No, sir. This is a time colleagues, my friends and to all the young people across the Caribbean Community (Caricom) — this is indeed our moment, this is your moment, where it is a time for action and a time of choosing,” Mitchell continued

The Grenada prime minister called on leaders to “pause and reflect on the many experiences we have had while in pursuit of regional integration” but also urged his colleagues “to redouble our efforts to finding solutions to our challenges”.

Mitchell’s address begs the question, has Caricom’s efforts gone far enough to ensure regional integration?

Since its inception in 1973 under the Treaty of Chaguaramas, Caricom has had four pillars of regional integration: economic integration, foreign policy coordination, human and social development, and security. Under the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, 2001, the organisation took a step further to deepen integration with the introduction of the Caricom Single Market & Economy (CSME).

“The CSME is undoubtedly the most ambitious project of Caricom since its founding in 1973. Almost 20 years after the Grand Anse Declaration the Caricom Heads of Government signed on to the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (RTC) in 2001. The ultimate goal of the RTC is to create a single economic space and ultimately economic union, complete policy coordination, harmonisation of functional areas and a common currency,” Samuel Braithwaite wrote in ‘Caricom Report: Progress and challenges of the integration agenda’.

“The common currency has since been removed from consideration as its implementation was seen as not realistic in the current dispensation,” he added in the Inter-American Development Bank-commissioned study published in 2021.

There are five main thrusts of the CSME: free movement of skills/labour, free movement of goods, free movement of services, free movement of capital, and the right of establishment.

Committed to implement

In 2006, Caribbean heads of government committed to full implementation of the CSME by 2008. But they would fall short of this goal on account of the 2007-2011 Great Recession.

Again in 2007, during a Heads of Government Meeting in St Lucia, another deadline was set for 2015.

Still, a progress report on the implementation of the CSME by Hassan et al has found that, up to 2016, only 56.5 per cent of measures to realise a single market has been actioned. Of the 619 actions required, only 315 have been completed.

Brathwaite concludes that, “While progress has been made towards achieving the goals of the CSME, Caricom governments have used the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas to secure the welfare of the citizens of their respective countries.”

Coincidentally, in 2016 Prime Minister of Jamaica Andrew Holness announced the appointment of a Caricom Review Commission to assess Jamaica’s participation in the regional bloc.

Led by former Prime Minister Bruce Golding, the commission focused on four key areas: the economic impact of Caricom, especially on the Jamaican economy; the mechanisms geared towards decision-making, implementation, enforcement and dispute settlement; the effectiveness of functional cooperation; and the possibilities and implications of Jamaica’s economic relationships outside of Caricom.

However, one of the main findings of the commission was that “while [the Caricom Secretariat] is often and unfairly blamed for Caricom’s slow pace of development, its powers are very limited. Much of the implementation deficit lies with national governments over which the secretariat has no authority.”

Moreover, the report proposed the formation of an oversight committee that has the primary responsibility of reviewing Caricom’s performance and the compliance of member states.

In addition, it recommended Jamaica’s withdrawal from the single market should there be no “clear, definitive commitment by all member states to a specific, time-bound, measurable and verifiable programme of action to fulfil all their obligations and complete all requirements for the CSME to be fully established and operational within the next five years”.

In his response to the ‘Golding Report’, Collin Constantine criticised the commission for not acknowledging that inadequate funding and untimely payment of member states’ contributions also factored into the implementation deficit of the Caricom Secretariat to achieve integration.

While Constantine highlighted deficiencies in the Caricom Review Commission’s methodology, he also found that Caribbean integration would also require addressing dissimilar socio-economic structures between member states, the failure to implement at the domestic political level, unequal distribution of gains that would result from integration.

On another note, he said that even though regional integration has been a priority of Caribbean Heads of Government, there is not much information on the buy-in of the citizenry.

Following the Golding Report, Caricom leaders held a special meeting in Trinidad on December 3-4, 2018, with the purpose of fast tracking the implementation of the CSME.

Although Brathwaite points out that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the free movement of people, goods and services, he highlights that there has been increased collaboration between member states on a number of issues including food security.

Following the closing of the Caribbean Heads of Government Meeting on Tuesday, July 5, a communiqué from Caricom noted: “Heads of Government expressed disappointment at the slow pace of implementation of the Caricom Single Market and Economy and took immediate steps to move the process forward.”