ABSTRACT
Sanitary and phytosanitary capacity-building constitutes an essential component of the Economic Partnership Agreements currently being negotiated between the European Union and a number of African countries and regions. The aim is to provide a sound, legal and regulatory framework that will allow the necessary capacity to be built in order to ensure African produce can gain access to European Union markets. 1 Africa looks forward to joint programmes [with the EU] in the establishment of a food safety institution, a functional competent authority that is fully supported for border inspections, rapid alert and monitoring to strengthen our food control systems. 2 Great powers are more likely to achieve regulatory coordination at their preferred level of standards. Their power affects the location of regulatory coordination in two ways. First, their market size can alter the incentives of actors such that their preferred outcome becomes the only equilibrium. Second, the threat of economic coercion can accelerate the lock-in effect of coordinating at the great power’s ideal point. 3
Chapter 2 analysed the EU food safety regime, which was found to be stringent and non-negotiable. Chapter 3 analysed COMESA countries’ food safety systems and found them to be weak or non-existent, and in any event non-compliant with EU and international standards. Chapter 4 analysed and highlighted COMESA
1 John Dalli, EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy, Speech at a High-Level Conference on Better Training for Safer Food, 18 November 2010, Brussels, <https://ec.europa. eu/food/training_strategy/docs/1819112010_btfs_conf_speech_commissioner_jd.pdf> accessed 13 October 2015.
