After their agreement in principle concluded on 21 April on the trade section of their revised global agreement (see EUROPE 12007), the European Union and Mexico are now due to finalise their work on the technical level, especially on import quotas, and to settle a key outstanding issue on access to Mexican public procurement.
Under the terms of the agreement in principle, the Mexican federal government committed to negotiate with the country's 32 federated states in order to enable EU companies to participate in calls for tender at the below-state level before signature of the agreement.
With the delay of setting up a new Mexican government after the elections of 1 July 2018, the EU does not expect the list of sub-federal entities that will open up their public procurement to European companies until early 2019, a European source told EUROPE on Tuesday 22 May.
After technical issues such as the management of import quotas have been settled, the Commission will move on to a legal scrubbing of the revised global agreement, which also includes a political section and one on cooperation, as well as its translation into all the official languages of the EU, before putting it to the EU Council and European Parliament for signature and ratification. As this agreement is mixed, it will require ratification from the EU's national parliament. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)