On the fringes of a conference on the fight against drug trafficking, Pedro Miguel da Costa e Silva, Brazil’s ambassador to the EU, talks to Agence Europe about the strengthening of security cooperation between the EU and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to counter the growing activity of illicit networks in the Atlantic. The ambassador also gave an update on trade relations between the two powers, addressing the sticking points and the prospects for finalising the EU-Mercosur agreement. (Interview by Justine Manaud and Juliette Verdes)
Agence Europe - Brazil is on the front line of drug trafficking, with increasing quantities of cocaine passing through your ports before arriving in Europe. Do you feel that the dialogue between the EU and the CELAC countries is sufficiently operational to combat this menace in the region?
Pedro Miguel da Costa e Silva -The reality is that it’s not just an issue of drug trafficking. Everything is about money. In Brazil, the federal police discovered that criminal organisations have infiltrated financial technology [fintech]. They’re laundering the money through Fintech, through gas stations, even online betting. If you want to transform this struggle into something more akin to a symmetrical struggle, you have to tackle the whole spectrum of crime: human trafficking, biodiversity trafficking, illegal mining, trafficking of arms.
So the most efficient way to deal with this issue is cooperation on the financial side and intelligence side and to have even more information sharing agreements. This involves judicial cooperation not only between our police forces but our ministries of justice. Not withstanding all the advances that you have, for example, in maritime cooperation and trying to apprehend the shipments of illicit narcotics and drugs.
At the moment we are analysing a proposal from Eurojust. When our minister of justice came to Brussels, he met with Commissioner Brunner [Internal Affairs and Migration] and there was the idea to launch a high level dialogue with Brazil and the EU on these issues that we decided to call ‘citizen security’. But what’s going to be a game changer for the bilateral relationship between Brazil and the EU in this field is the Brazilian police and Europol agreement. It has already been ratified by the European Parliament (see EUROPE 13705/16) and is right now before our Congress and we’re sure it will be ratified soon. This will totally change the way that both police cooperate.
Is the EU shouldering its share of responsibility for the global drugs economy?
It is clear that drug trafficking involves criminal organisations on the two sides of the Atlantic, not only in Latin America and the Caribbean as there is also the question of demand. The difference between the price of the coca leaves and the drug reaching the streets in the EU or the United States leaves a huge margin of profit so the incentive [to produce] is there. This is the notion of ‘shared responsibility’, which is in the EU-CELAC declaration.
So you have to not just stop the shipments coming, as the European Ports Alliance is already doing, but also tackle the consumption and demand on your side, and the gangs organising and arming themselves in Europe to manage their side of the business.
In Latin America, part of the traditional cultivation of coca leaves feeds the illegal production of cocaine. Are any solutions currently being explored with the EU?
In some countries, coca fields are partially replaced by other crops, but the challenge here is that you need markets to sell the crops that you are planting. It has to be a means of living for the farmers. It has to generate sufficient revenue for them to have a decent way of life.
You will only stop planting coca illegally to supply the cocaine market if you don’t have a business. If you continue having a demand for drugs, people will continue planting coca beyond their traditional needs. We need to offer them alternatives.
The free trade agreements between the EU and Mercosur could help to resolve this problem to some extent. But some European countries are still reluctant...
If you want to generate development, you have to let the developing countries export what they produce.
You need to generate the conditions for a decent standard of living. And in many countries, farmers produce specific products sold to the EU. Some of them are tropical products that the EU doesn’t even produce, like coffee or cocoa. So, it’s difficult sometimes to understand this resistance. Europeans, like us, want to avoid deforestation, but we have to be careful to make sure that we don’t stop trade.
The EU is the biggest agri-food exporter in the world and has a very significant surplus. It’s complicated sometimes to understand why the sector has such a reluctance to import.
Latin American countries have expressed concern about European legislation against deforestation. Is the one-year postponement of its implementation enough for Brazil?
No, it’s not sufficient. It’s good news that it has been delayed and another good news is that changes were made. But we do not like the benchmark system of the legislation. We think that it’s not an objective system, if you look at the countries and how they have been classified.
Some of the definitions are problematic. For example, the EU has included leather. But it does not generate any kind of deforestation. There is an issue with the monitoring system that is used by the EU to identify deforestation. Then there is a lack of understanding of some of the production methods. People here have no idea that cocoa originates in the Amazon and that there is a system of plantation of cocoa that happens under the trees. But the EUDR (EU Deforestation Regulation) does not provide for that.
So there are a series of problems in the legislation. It’s an extra territorial regulation which basically has the objective of trying to control the use of land in Latin American countries, or at least the change of use of land in our country. But there is a misunderstanding of how we produce. We are tropical agricultural countries that have a completely different reality.
And, what’s more, is that we forget the fact that 63% of Brazil is covered by natural original biomes. In Europe, has only 1% of primary forests. It’s difficult to apply a law to other countries when you don’t really apply it to yourself. Many of the European actors are asking to be labelled as ‘low risk’ under this legislation.
So all of this to say that we would have preferred a legislation that was more cooperative. But now that we have the legislation and that it’s going to come into force, what we expect is dialogue, cooperation and exchange of information to make sure that it works. And I am confident that most of the Brazilian exporters will be able to comply with the EU Deforestation Regulation fully.
Are you concerned about a scenario comparable to that of the EU-Canada trade agreement, in which the interim trade agreement would come into force without the political agreement ever being ratified by the EU?
We are waiting for its decision. So, the day the EU and its Member States tell us that they’re ready, we will move fast, we are ready to engage. The ball is clearly in the EU’s court.