Brussels, 10/02/2011 (Agence Europe) - In the view of Karel De Gucht, the EU is inclined to reach an agreement with its South American partners for the Mercosur block (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, which is in the process of joining). The exchange of offers between the parties is scheduled for early March, but the European Commission will have to deal with the persistent misgivings of the Parliament and Council.
“We are trying to reach an agreement, it will obviously not be easy, but I believe that the moment is far more propitious than a few years ago, for economic reasons, but also for political reasons”, said the trade commissioner on Wednesday 9 February, at a press conference in Montevideo, the headquarters of Mercosur, further to a meeting with the Uruguayan President José Mujica. “We are walking with a firm, safe tread, which is perhaps unusual in terms of trade negotiations, which usually take a great deal of time”, he added, before expressing his satisfaction at recent progress.
In Asunción on Monday, for the first stage of his trip to Paraguay and Uruguay from 7 to 9 February, De Gucht intimated that it was unlikely that an agreement would be concluded before the summer. “I cannot say when we should be able to finish, but we will work as quickly as we can”, he said. As expected, the Europeans and South Americans will exchange their commercial offers in Brussels in March, at the fourth negotiating session since talks resumed in May 2010.
The commercial plank of the EU-Mercosur association agreement, negotiations for which were initially launched in 1995, aim to go beyond the obligations imposed upon both parties by the WTO, to extend the liberalisation of trade in goods and services, taking account of the sensitivities of each. The commercial arrangement will also cover investment, public procurement, sustainable development, intellectual property and geographical indications, as well as competition, and will include a special agreement on sanitary and phyto-sanitary standards, and a dispute settlement mechanism.
In the coming months, however, the European executive will have to deal with the misgivings of both the European Parliament and the Council. At the examination at the end of January of the report by Georgios Papastamkos (EPP, Greece) on agriculture and international trade, the agriculture committee criticised the Commission's approach to trade negotiations, calling for talks with Mercosur to be suspended until the multilateral Doha Round is concluded. Although it expressed its favourable position, when the plenary session adopted the report by Helmut Scholz (GUE/NGL, Germany) on trade relations with South America in October, upon resumption of negotiations with Mercosur, the Parliament also called for vigilance over the issues of standards for consumer protection, animal welfare and environmental protection. At the Council, the last exchange of views on Mercosur, which took place at the meeting of the agriculture ministers on 17 May, saw France, plus some 10 other member states (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia) openly criticise the decision of the European Executive to resume negotiations, due to concerns of potential harmful effects for their agriculture, particularly the meat sector, especially as the South Americans have made the resumption of talks conditional upon better access for their agricultural products to Europe, in exchange for increased access to their industrial and services markets. The EU-Brazil bilateral summit of 14 July led French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire to reiterate his opposition to the resumption of talks with Mercosur, on 16 July. (E.H./transl.fl)