Pity poor Richard Bernal. He used to be head, until recently, of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM), the body that leads trade negotiations on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and was responsible of the so-called Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU).

But while it was CRNM officials who actually sat at the negotiating table, across from their counterparts in the European Commission, they negotiated with a mandate from regional leaders. Indeed, CRNM officials could finalise no pact, including the EPA, without the consent of CARICOM's leaders.

Beyond that, Dr Bernal and his staff spent several years, while the EPA was being fashioned, criss-crossing the Caribbean attempting to coax private sector participation in, and response to the negotiating agenda. They had embarrassingly little success.

At one forum in Kingston, organised by the American Chamber of Commerce of Jamaica, Dr Bernal and Jamaica's then foreign affairs and foreign trade minister, Anthony Hylton, lamented the paucity of the participation by the private sector, and public commentators, in that session and the wider discussion. Their concern echoed a 1990s complaint, at a similar forum, by another former Jamaican minister, Hugh Small, when the region was involved in global trade talks under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Bad deal

So, now the CRRM and, implicitly, Dr Bernal are being pilloried for supposedly negotiating a bad deal. Even some of the leaders, particularly Guyana's Bharrat Jagdeo, who signed off on the arrangement, have distanced themselves from it, and might not sign the formal document. It is entirely possible that the whole thing could unravel, or CARICOM could resort to a multi-tracked approach - what the leaders euphemistically refer to as a "variable geometry".

The EPA is to be a reciprocal free trade pact, except that for this region, the EU markets open immediately, while the phase-in for European exports begins in three years time and should last for 15 years.

There are two primary complaints levelled at the EPA by its critics:

That there is no leeway for CARICOM to provide more favourable trade terms to other groups, including developing countries, than those provided to the EU; and

that promised development assistance from Europe is not specific in either quantum or sequence, and that neither are there consequences if the Europeans fail to deliver. This contrasts with legally bound trade segments of the agreement.

Renegotiate the agreement

Perhaps CARICOM, in the face of what Americans usually call Monday morning quarter-backing, can renegotiate the agreement, especially with the support of sceptics in the EU. It is hardly likely, though, no matter however we may wish it, that there will be a return to the status quo. In these days of globalisation, preferential trade deals are dying, if not dead. Ask the Latin American - developing countries - banana producers, who challenged at the WTO the preferential regime the EU had in place for ACP countries.

We hear the argument that the region has long had substantial market preference in Europe which, for a lack of productive capacity, it has been unable to maximise. History, however, ought not to be a shackle. It can't be beyond the ingenuity of Caribbean people, leveraging production-sharing capacities in a wider economic space, to leverage available opportunities.

That demands more than finger-pointing.