Bob Geldof, the pop musician who has been a leading campaigner for Africa, accused the European Union on December 7, of dictating the timetable for new trade terms with African nations. Speaking in Berlin a day ahead of the start of an EU summit with African leaders in the Portuguese capital Lisbon, he charged that the EU was creating unnecessary time pressure to settle new economic partnership agreements (EPA). The EU is demanding a deal by the end of the year with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states, granting them access for their farm products to Europe in exchange for EU nations obtaining reciprocal access for their own goods. “I don’t think that an economic giant should put an economic gun to an economic dwarf, and say, ‘You do this because the time is running out or forget it.’ That is not the way you negotiate,” said Geldof. “I would not do this to somebody else. Because if you do, you’ll end up with a lousy business deal. You end up with unwilling partners,” Geldof said. “I don’t criticise the instrument of the EPA. But the deadline imposed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) that the negotiations must be completed by the end of December. Why does the EU not say, ‘Let’s change the deadline’?” Geldof said the issue of trade ought to dominate the Lisbon summit, because the Africans needed trade, “not to be lectured at.”