Pacific Trade officials are meeting in Nadi to report on outcomes from last month's Economic Partnership Agreement, or EPA, negotiations with the European Union in Brussels.
Pacific Countries have already proposed alternative wordings to widen the exemptions in the current export tax provisions and are awaiting a response from the EU.
Some of the Pacific countries are also unhappy with EU demands that they drop infant industry safeguards after 20 years.
The Pacific Network on Globalisation has warned that some Pacific countries won't sign EPAs if the EU insists on these commitments over export taxes and infant industries.
PANG's Wesley Morgan says the EU's approach to the negotiations isn't framed around assisting development in the Pacific:
"But have instead been framed around the EU's Global Europe Trade Strategy which is where the EU is seeking to gain greater access to markets and to ensure a continuing supply of resources from all of its former colonies in Africa, the Carribean and the Pacific."
Wesley Morgan
