A EU-Style Club For The Pacific?

A vision for a Pacific Islands version of the European Union (EU) has emerged from a review of the policies, practises and functioning of the Pacific Islands Forum and its Suva, Fiji, secretariat.

The EU, a club of what will soon be more than 20 European states, is one of the world¹s greatest trade blocs.

Members commit themselves from scrapping trade barriers between themselves to permitting the free movement of EU country citizens across their borders for work, business and tourism purposes.

Most EU countries accept the common currency, which meant scrapping currencies like the French franc, German mark and Italian lire, but not so far the British pound.

They also accept common agricultural, labour laws, standards and numerous other policies and laws.

The concept of an equivalent Pacific union is not entirely new. But it has not before been floated at such a high regional level as the Forum, a 32-year-old club of 14 Melanesian, Polynesian and Micronesian independent states and New Zealand and Australia.

New Zealand¹s prime minister, Helen Clark, as the Forum¹s current chair, said a EU-style association of islands states had emerged as a "vision for the Pacific for the 21st Century."

She held a three-day meeting in Wellington to discuss a report by a review team called for by last year¹s Forum in Auckland.

The details of the proposal haven¹t been published but are believed to be sketchy. One report said the union envisaged would be far more comprehensive than anything so far launched by the Pacific Islands including the free trade area Forum islands countries have agreed to develop between themselves over the next 10 years.

Greg Urwin, the Forum¹s new secretary-general, who was at the Wellington meeting, said the common market idea for the islands was "ground-breaking." Cooperation across the region could be deepened in a lot of areas, he said. "It strikes me that what they have probably got in mind is the way the EU slowly developed from a set of practical measures into something rather broader."

Pacific Islands countries, whether independent or still under various forms of colonial rule, work together with various degrees of success through a growing variety of regional institutions.

These range from the University of the South Pacific, owned by 12 countries, the Forum Fisheries Agency, the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme, the South Pacific Geoscience Commission and the Pacific Community, an economic, health and agricultural project agency, headquartered in Noumea, New Caledonia. It covers all 22 Pacific Islands states and territories.

Melanesian countries have the Melanesian Spearhead as their political and economic co-operation institution. Polynesian states haven¹t so far managed to force an equivalent one.

The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, recently suggested the adoption of a common Pacific currency.

The two trade pacts launched last year under the auspices of the Forum cover islands countries that have actually very little to offer in the way of trade with each other due to their generally sparse resources and extremely limited industrial base.

In the long term, Australia and New Zealand, the two dominant economic powers in the south-west Pacific, would become eligible to become part of the island free trade arrangements. Moves are being made to bring the Pacific French and United States colonies into the arrangement also.

Professor Ron Crocombe, writing in his latest edition of The Pacific recalls that a single government for the region is an idea first floated in 1880 by King Kalakaua of Hawaii who wanted a Polynesian Federation led by Hawaii. There have been British and Australian proposals for Pacific federations, and a Solomons proposal for a Melanesian federation.

Pacific regionalism is attractive to Australia and New Zealand because "it gives them an opportunity to be major players whereas they are minor players in global relations," he says.

The Pacific is not aiming for integration, in the sense of moving towards a single Pacific Islands nations or federation.

"Regional activity accounts for only a small fraction of that at national level. The aim is more modest and realistic, to achieve functional and pragmatic cooperation in selected fields for specific purposes. That has been achieved."