Common Contracts

INTERNAL AGREEMENT

March 16th, 2006

• Filed
  March 16th, 2006

The internal agreement has to be ratified by all Member States before entering into force. Past experience has shown that this ratification process may take 2 years or even more from the date of signature of the agreement. When signing the revision of the ACP-EC partnership agreement on 25 June 2005, the ACP and the EC therefore made a joint declaration that “each of the parties will endeavour to implement the procedure for ratifying the revised Cotonou Agreement within 18 months of the signing of the revised Agreement, with due regard for national and Community responsibilities and procedures”. As the 9th EDF is expected to be fully committed by the end of 2007, it is extremely important that the 10th EDF can effectively start on the first day of 2008, so the ratification process should start as soon as possible, i.e. immediately after adoption by the ACP-EC Council of Ministers of the related multi-annual financial framework for the period 2008-2013, which is planned for early June 2