Christopher Stevens
Director of Programmes

Areas of Research
Trade, EPAs, WTO, EU, Africa.
c.stevens@odi.org.uk

Christopher Stevens joined IEDG as Director of Programmes in April 2006. He was previously with IDS where he published widely on trade issues, click here for more...

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Negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the European Union (EU)

ODI has a long history of technical support to negotiators and stakeholders in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states which is complemented by the work that Christopher Stevens has been doing in association with Jane Kennan. They have compiled a trade and tariff database and a methodology, described in a Briefing Paper that allows those with moderate spreadsheet skills to produce alternative EPA liberalisation strategies. As these produce different patterns of 'winners' and 'losers' the aim is to empower ACP stakeholders as well as governments to engage in informed national debates that result in a small number of preferred options that can then be modelled rigorously.

Click here for the Briefing Paper 117KB

To facilitate this debate they have run training courses in the ACP regions as well as distributing widely by email the dataset and a User Handbook. These courses also 'train regional trainers' who can sustain the dissemination process by running further courses. They are linked to a series of Negotiating Skills Workshops on market access in EPAs, organised by the EU-ACP Project Management Unit, for which ODI is providing the technical support. Participants receive a training manual on EPA market access issues which is also a useful resource for stakeholders. The inaugural dataset training course and negotiating skills workshop in Barbados (September 2005) was so successful that the Senior Director of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM), Henry Gill, went on record that it not only exceeded his expectations but 'was probably the most useful session that the CRNM has had with any of its partners since [he] joined' over 6 years ago.

Click here for the Handbook 419KB, click here for the Manual 306KB

The full datasets for 55 ACP states have been analysed by Christopher Stevens and Jane Kennan to identify key potential features of EPAs and the results presented in a Briefing Paper. One finding is that EPAs have great potential to disrupt autonomous regionalism in the ACP group. Further research has demonstrated a strong likelihood of this potential being realised in the Eastern and Southern Africa region. Even greater problems are foreseen for SADC where the pre-existing EU-South Africa Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement (TDCA) greatly constrains ACP freedom of manoeuvre.

Click here for the Briefing Paper 131KB, click here for the paper on the Eastern and Southern Africa region 419KB, click here for the paper on the SADC 254KB

EU Trade Preferences

Trade preferences are intended to help developing countries export. But do they? Christopher Stevens and Jane Kennan have compared the Quad's trade preferences for Africa in a publicly available Report and a Briefing Paper. There is a lively debate over whether the 'gains' for favoured states are 'paid for' by other countries that may be equally poor. Even for the favoured states, though, questions have been raised over how far their producers benefit. Does the 'small print' of the trade preferences prevent exporters in general (or poor producers in particular) from taking full advantage of them? Who gains most: exporters or rich-country importers? Stevens and Kennan show that preferences are well used by the relatively small number of countries that are able to take advantage of them - and that this number could be increased by change to the rules of origin.

Click here for the Briefing Paper 180KB, click here for the Report 896KB

The EU's complex 'pyramid of privilege' is continually changing, creating new opportunities for some and reducing those for others. A Briefing Paper on the new GSP agreed in June 2005 shows that it may present the greatest shake up for many years. So favourable is the main innovation, the GSP+, that it might be turned into an alternative to EPAs for the ACP. Christopher Stevens and Jane Kennan have analysed what changes would be needed to create what they call a GSP++ that would offer the ACP the same market access as they enjoy now.

Click here for the Briefing Paper 126KB, click here for the Report 358KB

One conclusion drawn by Christopher Stevens is that if GSP+ is widely used just 14 developing countries (many middle income, but some very poor) will be discriminated against by EU trade policy. In a book chapter Can EU Policy be Coherent assessing EU policy coherence he demonstrates the multilateral fragility of EU policy and that the future treatment of these countries needs careful attention.

Click here for the Book Chapter 184KB

Multilateral Trade Policy

Chris Stevens work on the WTO focuses primarily on extending the concept of special and differential treatment (SDT). More effective and nuanced SDT is seen not as a 'concession' to developing countries but as a pre-requisite to creating a more extensive, binding set of rules for world trade (IDS Bulletin 34(2)). Africa stands to be affected perhaps more than any other developing region by any market access changes agreed under Doha. In an Economic Research Working Paper for the African Development Bank, Christopher Stevens reviews the challenges facing Africa from multilateral and bilateral trade policy change.

Click here for the Working Paper 169KB

Trade Liberalisation and Food Security

The need for appropriate and effective STD is nowhere more needed than in the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (IDS Bulletin 36 (2)). But multilateral rules are only one of many influences on the international dimension of food security. The changes to the EU's common agricultural policy (CAP), although widely described as 'liberalisation', have effects that are very different from those conjured up by this term. They will tend to affect some developing countries depending upon both their social and economic circumstances.

For the Report, please Click here for the Report 477KB

New Areas of Trade Policy

The erosion of tariffs combined with the spread of jurisdictions of commercial policies that traditionally have been domestic (such as on competition and intellectual property), the growth of international trade and services and concerns for process criteria in trade policy (e.g. on the environmental effects of production and on labour standards), is leading to a situation in which the framework for developing country trade will be dominated increasingly by national and plurilateral 'non-trade' policies. It is important to identify the implications of these policies for specific products and country groups, and in turn this requires the development of new methodologies.

A strong focus for work is on services trade negotiations and the impact of new sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards. Christopher Stevens and Jane Kennan have worked with FAO and ILRI to establish how SPS rules on livestock influence the pattern of trade and distribution of gains.

Click here for the Working paper 496KB

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