Technical Assistance for the Establishment of a Coordination Mechanism for the Economic Partnership Agreement signatory countries of the Eastern and Southern group, currently implementing the ESA 5 EPA Phase III (COMEE III).

Context An interim Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and Eastern and Southern Africa (EU-ESA iEPA) has been signed by Mauritius, Seychelles, Zimbabwe and Madagascar in August 2009 and is applied provisionally since May 2012. Comoros signed the agreement in July 2017 and started applying it as from February 2019. In 2018, the countries declared their interest to move towards a more comprehensive agreement, as foreseen in the iEPA. COMEE Technical Assistance In order to better coordinate their negotiation positions, ESA5 countries requested in 2018 that a Coordination Mechanism (COMEE) be set up to accompany them in the negotiations and build their capacity in the negotiation process for the deepening of the Agreement. This project is the third phase of the COMEE technical assistance. It has several objectives, namely: to ensure appropriate coordination and technical support to the ESA5 so that they can engage effectively in the negotiation process for the deepening of the interim EPA; to provide logistical support for part of the physical and virtual participation of the ESA5 countries in EU-ESA negotiation rounds and committees, intersessional meetings and internal ESA5 preparatory meetings; to provide expert training on specific chapters of the negotiations; to conduct dialogue with relevant non state actors on the deepening of the interim EPA; to perform the legal scrubbing of the concluded agreement.