The European Union (EU) is pushing ahead with plans for a ‘Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area’ with Egypt, despite criticisms of the process from NGOs and the European Parliament for its potentially destructive effects on both employment and economic sovereignty.
A Free Trade Area agreement between the EU and Egypt has already been in place since 2004. The Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) is a more extreme version first proposed by the European Council in 2007. Moves towards such an agreement stalled during the last years of the Mubarak government, but negotiations have resumed under the new EU-Egypt Task Force announced by European Commission President José Barroso and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi last September. DCFTAs aim to remove all barriers to trade and foreign investment through such means as privatization and disallowing state subsidies to industry or preferential taxes.
