Three hundred representatives from social and economic interest groups in the ACP countries and the European Union gathered for a meeting at the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels on 4, 5 and 6 March 2008.

The long and sustained expansion of the nineties has generated, especially in the US, widespread rumours about the "death of the cycle". Nevertheless, towards the end of the last decade, it became clear that fluctuations of economic activity were far from being extinct. This has contributed...