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The Cotonou Agreement is a treaty between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of states, signed in 2000 in Cotonou, the largest city in Benin. Seventy-eight ACP countries and the then fifteen member states of the European Union signed this treaty. It was ratified in 2003 and is the latest and most comprehensive agreement in the history of ACP-EU Development Cooperation¬.
ACP is an abbreviation referring to the countries of Africa (South of Sahara), the Caribbean and the Pacific. The ACP group was created by Georgetown Agreement of 1975. The main objectives of this group are: * Promoting and strengthening of solidarity and understanding between ACP peoples and governments; * Promoting a new, fairer and equitable world order; * Contributing to the development of closer economic, social and cultural relations among developing countries, as well as development of cooperation among ACP states in the areas of trade, science and technology, industry, transport, education, training and research, information and communication, the environment and human resources.
* Promoting regional, inter-regional and intra-ACP cooperation.
The ACP Group now comprises 79 member-states. All of them, except for communist Cuba are signatories of the new Cotonou Agreement, which binds them to the EU. The Group has 48 countries from sub-Saharan-Africa, 16 from the Caribbean and 15 from the Pacific region. These were at one time colonies or dependent territories of European countries presently member states of the EU. The countries that have signed the Cotonou agreement and are given aid and preferential access to EU markets are: Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bermuda, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape-Verde, the Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Cook Islands, Cot d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominica, Timor Leste, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Micronesia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauro, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Palau, Rwanda, Republic of Congo, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Western Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Suriname, Senegal, Swaziland, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The original aim of creating the Group was to...