Editorial | CARICOM glass half full

Among the more encouraging developments out of this week’s summit of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) heads of government in Belize was the leaders’ embrace of the principle of a multi-track community, which this newspaper has championed since its formal proposal by the Persaud commission more than a year ago. Our disappointment, however, is the too-high threshold – two-thirds of its members – the community has set for initiatives to proceed without everyone going along.

CARICOM is notorious for agreeing to do things then dragging its feet on them forever. Which is what underpinned the recommendation that the group headed by Barbadian economist, Avinash Persaud, euphemistically referred to as “enhanced cooperation” in the community .Their aim, really, was to address what other people, including some leaders, call CARICOM’s implementation deficit.

The question now is whether, with a bar this high, the reforms will have the hoped-for effect in breaking the logjam within the community. We have our doubts, but hope, fervently, for the best.

It is more than three decades since CARICOM leaders committed to transforming the trade and cooperation agreement to a regional single market and economy. It has been almost 16 years since the signing of formal instruments to do so. But, since that time, the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) has moved in fits and starts.

MULTI-TRACK APPROACH

Usually, at conferences, leaders assent to undertakings to deepen the integration of the region’s economies, but, at home, run into domestic, political and economic concerns that cause them delay, if not, change their minds about the agreements. It is against this backdrop that a commission, chaired by Persaud, in a report for CARICOM on how to sustainably kick-start its economies, proposed a multi-track approach to implementing projects, for which it isn’t critical that all member states begin at the same time.

Said the commission in its report: “Getting change going is important in itself. Change begets change. The initiative we would like to propose to break CSME agreements out of gridlock is that of enhanced cooperation. Among those matters that are best done internationally, some need to be done collectively at the same time and some could work in a phased manner, if a critical number of countries set off first in an advance party. There are initiatives, for instance, that some would join but only if others, more enthusiastically, have shown that it works first. Matters that would be done under enhanced cooperation would still be discussed and debated at CARICOM and marshalled by the CARICOM Secretariat so that all are involved, just not all starting at the same time.”

With this arrangement, CARICOM is borrowing a system used by many regional blocs, including the European Union (EU) – except for the ratio that can greenlight projects. In the EU, it requires at least a third of members to commit to a programme for it to be launched. In CARICOM, that would translate to at least five of the 14 members that subscribe to its economic agreements. The leaders, however, agreed that, in CARICOM, two-thirds of the members, or at least 10 rounded up, will have to say yes.

“Once we can reach a threshold of two-thirds of the community, we can go ahead without unanimity,” said the Barbados prime minister, Mia Mottley, who has responsibility for the CSME within CARICOM. “That enhanced cooperation is central towards us being able to progress within the community without necessarily requiring everybody to move at the same pace.”

Significantly, amendments to the requisite protocols of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, the accord upon which CARICOM rests and dictates that decisions by heads of government must be unanimous, have been done and open for signature by member states. While it doesn’t entirely compensate for our disappointment over the threshold number, the reform is a bit of a palliative. Something happened, maybe more will. The glass is half full.