Brussels, 02/10/2014 (Agence Europe) - At the end of September, the Commission launched a consultation of stakeholders to assess the ex-post economic, social and environmental impact of the free-trade agreement between the EU and Mexico, in force since 2000. According to the Commission, this investigation was to identify the priorities ahead modernisation of the agreement.
The commissioner-candidate for trade in the incoming Junker Commission, Cecilia Malmström, confirmed at her hearing before the European Parliament on 29 September that “there is an old agreement between the EU and Mexico that needs to be updated. Our Mexican partners, as well as ourselves, are engaged in the scoping exercise and I am not ruling out that we will be asking the Council for a negotiating brief by next year”.
The EU and Mexico are linked by an economic partnership, and political coordination and co-operation agreement, known as a comprehensive agreement, concluded 1997. This agreement includes trade provisions that have been developed in a free-trade agreement that entered into force in 2000 for the part of the agreement on trade in goods and in 2001 for the part on the trade in services. This agreement also includes specific chapters on access to public market contracts, competition, intellectual property rights and investment. It is overseen by a joint committee and special committees that meet up once a year, and by a joint council which meets every two years at the most senior political level.
In line with the decisions taken at the EU-Latin American summit in January 2013, the EU and Mexico are examining the options for comprehensive and ambitious modernisation of the trade chapter of the EU-Mexico economic partnership agreement. A joint working group has been set up.
In this context, the Commission has commissioned the Ecorys research institute to carry out an ex-post evaluation of the economic, social and environmental impact of the EU-Mexico free-trade agreement to compare the expected effects of the existing agreement and the actual results obtained. This study also includes an ex-ante assessment of the effects of a possible modernisation of the agreement to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the possible policy options for modernising this agreement.
The online questionnaire devised by Ecorys is available at the following address: https://s.chkmkt.com/?e=31906&d=e&h=5373634D6F27DC1
The EU is Mexico's second largest export market, after the US, and its third biggest source of imports, after the US and China. In 2013, EU exports of goods to Mexico were worth €27.4 billion and its imports from Mexico amounted to €17.5 billion. Minerals, machinery, electrical equipment, transport materials and optical and photographic precision instruments made up the bulk of Mexico's exports to the EU. Machinery and electrical equipment, transport materials, chemical and mineral products made up the most part of the EU's exports to Mexico.
In 2012, the EU's exports of services to Mexico were worth €7.1 billion and its imports of services from Mexico amounted to €3.2 billion. Bilateral trade in services is dominated by tourism, maritime transport, air transport, construction services (from Mexico to the EU) and computing and information technology services (from the EU to Mexico).
In 2012, the EU's inward foreign direct investment stock into Mexico totalled €89.6 billion, as compared to €81 billion in 2011 and inward foreign direct investment stock from Mexico to the EU climbed to €22.2 billion in 2012, against €8.7 billion the previous year. (EH)