The Cotonou Partnership Agreement, signed on 2000, marks the beginning of a new cooperation phase between ACP countries and the EU. The IV pillar of the Agreement, aimed at the creation of a free trade area, concerns the economic and trade cooperation and is targeted to make trade in line with the WTO rules and to allow the ACP countries a full participation to international trade understood as strategic condition for supporting growth and development. In this context, the trade relationships between the EU and Africa are of specific importance when referred to agricultural products. The liberalization process might have a significant impact for the EU as leading world exporter and importer of agricultural goods and the wider destination and origin... |