South Africa’s Trade Minister Alec Erwin

Date: 25/02/1999

has warned that his country's planned free-trade deal with the EU could disintegrate unless Union governments stop making additional demands. Erwin said that if EU member states continued to push for extra concessions, Pretoria would start to do the same and the whole package, painstakingly negotiated over four years, would collapse. The minister warned that it was not in the best interests of the EU, South Africa or developing countries for the deal to unravel over what he called “fairly minor matters”. Southern European countries are holding up the deal because they believe it makes too many concessions to South African wine producers and farmers.