DM Monitoring
BRUSSELS: The European Union has expressed its unwavering support for South Africa’s leadership of the G20 ahead of this month’s summit in Johannesburg, amid rising tensions between South Africa and the US following President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze aid over controversial land reform laws.
Trump froze US aid to South Africa last week, citing a law in the country that he alleges allows land to be seized from white farmers, despite Johannesburg’s denials.
One of Trump’s allies is South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, who has accused South African Presi-dent Cyril Ramaphosa’s government of having “openly racist ownership laws”.
South Africa will host G20 talks of foreign ministers in Johannesburg on February 20-21, which US Sec-retary of State Marco Rubio has said he will skip, accusing the host government of having an “anti-American” agenda.
European Council chief Antonio Costa spoke to Ramaphosa by phone and gave the EU’s support to South Africa ahead of the talks.
“On my phone call with President Cyril Ramaphosa, I highlighted the EU’s commitment to deepen ties with South Africa, as a reliable and predictable partner,” Costa posted on X.
“I expressed the EU’s full support to South Africa’s leadership of G20 and its ambition to strengthen multilateral cooperation and the Pact for the Future to address the most pressing global issues,” Costa added.
There will be a meeting between the European Union and South Africa on March 13, he said.
Earlier, Pakistan is all set to sign agreements on Tariff Rate Quotas (TRQs) for rice with the European Union (EU) to ensure enhanced export of rice from Pakistan to EU including husked brown rice as agreed with the EU, well informed sources in Commerce Ministry told media.
Recently, Ministry of Commerce apprised the Cabinet that subsequent to the decision of the United Kingdom (UK) to leave the European Union (EU) in January 2020, the EU initiated negotiations, under Article XXVIII of the GATT, for the apportionment of the Tariff Rate Quotas (TRQs) between EU-27 and the UK.
It was further informed that Article XIII of the GATT obliged the contracting parties to administer TRQs non-discriminatorily amongst all and to distribute Trade under TRQs in a way that their shares resemble closely with levels they may have obtained in the absence of such restrictions.
It was noted that the underlying principle of the negotiations for the re- apportionment was a “joint approach” developed between the EU and the UK in 2017 on how to “apportion” the quantitative commitments. These commitments were contained in the EU-28 WTO Schedule for the 142 EU agricultural, fish and industrial WTO Tariff Rate Quotas on the basis that the existing volume of each TRQ would be fully maintained in the future but would be split across two separate customs territories, namely, the EU-27 and the UK.
