Will the recent Economic Partnership Agreement make a difference to Irie Tools?
March 9th, 2008 by 
stuart
On the rare occassions (and by that I mean never) that I think about the recent Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) signed between the European Community and the CARIFORUM countries, I think about big industries and businesses trying to gain access to the EU market and vice versa. I do not think about small businesses like mine. So, recently when I got an invitation to a seminar to clarify the opportunities and challenges for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), presented by the recent EPA, I was less than enthusiastic.
To make things worse, the invitation then goes on to say:
At this seminar, MSMEs will have an opportunity to meet and interact with representatives from
the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM), the Delegation of the European
Commission to Jamaica, European diplomats and members of the Consular Corps representing
European countries.
I almost fell asleep just thinking about it. I thought the idea of an invitation was to make people want to go.
Anyway, I wish I could ignore this invitation, but it is obvious that this EPA is going to be very important, and unfortunately nobody seems to be in a hurry to explain to the public what was signed on our behalf. So how can I turn down an invitation to find out more? By the way, that’s a real question, please someone, tell me how I can get out of this?
Even the text of the EPA seems to be a secret (or at least well hidden). How hard can it be to put the document on a website and link to it?
