EU decides to cancel the fourth round of negotiations of the EU-CAN Association Agreement!

international | eu | press release Wednesday July 02, 2008 10:34 by José Antonio Gutiérrez - Latin American Solidarity Centre research at lasc dot ie 5 Merrion Row, Dublin 2 01-6760435

Since September 2007, the CAN, integrated by Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, and the EU, have been negotiating an Association Agreement, consisting in three pillars: Cooperation, Political Dialogue and Trade.

The EU, in a surprising move, has decided to cancel the Fourth Round of negotiations of the EU-CAN Association Agreement that was going to take place from July 7th to 11th in Brussels. This decision was communicated to the Ecuadorian government which is holding the interim presidency of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN). The reason given to cancel the Round was the deep disagreements existing in the CAN on issues to be negotiated as part of the Trade Pillar, such as Intellectual Property, Trade and Sustainable Development.

According to the Ecuadorian Minister of Economy, Pedro Páez, this will give the Andean block more time to internally discuss these and other sensitive issues, such as Migration or Public Procurement. According to his own words, “it is better to clarify first certain things, instead of rushing into new negotiations with uncertainties”.

It is still not clear when the Fourth Round of negotiations will be held, but according to Páez, it could be at least in a couple of months.

Since September 2007, the CAN, integrated by Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, and the EU, have been negotiating an Association Agreement, consisting in three pillars: Cooperation, Political Dialogue and Trade.

The ongoing negotiations between the EU and CAN have been plagued with problems, mainly, for the strong opposition presented by Andean civil society organisations and the governments of Bolivia and Ecuador to the imposition of a Neoliberal agenda in the Trade discussion. Although the EU has insisted publicly that the Association Agreement is not a Free Trade Agreement, the EU Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson, threatened to exclude Bolivia from the negotiations if they were not to accept Free Trade in the terms proposed by the EU, during the Lima Summit of Latin American, Caribbean and European Heads of State in May.

According to the spokesperson of the Ecuadorian civil society umbrella group, Ecuador Decide, Paulina Muñoz, “We have rejected the EU-CAN Association Agreement, for it is exactly the same to the Free Trade Agreement with the US we have already rejected. The Cooperation and Political Dialogue pillars are nothing but a cosmetic façade for a Trade pillar which pretends to control our markets. We are worried that through these agreements a new colonisation of our people is started”. Her views are shared by numerous civil society organisations in the four Andean countries.

Negotiations have faced further difficulties because of the turbulent political situation in the CAN countries and conflict within this block, the new EU immigration policy -the “Return Directive”- that has soured the relationship’s between Latin American countries and the EU and the attempts to do separate, bilateral negotiations between the EU and Colombia/Peru, excluding Bolivia and Ecuador. This plunged the CAN into a deep crisis that could compromise the future of the block.