Brussels, 31/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, will go to Brazil, Argentina and Chile next week on the occasion of the third round of negotiations for association agreements between the EU and Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay) and Chile, round to be held in Brasilia from 7 to 10 November and in Santiago, Chile, from 13 to 16 November. The aim of this visit is to provide a "new political impetus" and stress the "priority" that the EU grants to the negotiations, following the declarations of Latin-American leaders, especially Argentinean, denouncing the so-called lack of interest on the part of the EU in these negotiations, Commission sources tell us.
Negotiations that began a year ago are now focusing on the non-tariff aspects of trade liberalisation and preparing negotiations over customs tariffs that are to begin in July 2001. The European delegation, headed by the Director General for External Relations, Guy Legras, will be composed of some forty members to cover all the issues under discussion: standards, plant health measures, trade defence instruments, rules of origin, customs, public procurement, intellectual property, competition and rules governing disputes. The negotiating team will also include experts in the realm of customs and that of services so as to pave the way for the future negotiations on tariff and services issues.
During the preceding rounds, the negotiators had set up three working parties, defined objectives and began an exchange of negotiating texts, as well as identifying non-tariff obstacles to trade. The negotiators are at the same time preparing the political content and realms of cooperation in the future agreements. The aim of this third round is to secure "tangible progress".
"A considerable amount of work still needs accomplishing to progress before reaching the difficult issues", remarked Commissioner Patten before the press on Tuesday. "The aim is to clear away the technical questions so as to be able to prepare the ground for tackling customs issues in 2001", he stipulated. Recognising that agriculture, the first goal of liberalisation for the Mercosur countries, would effectively be a problem during negotiations, Commissioner Patten stressed that Mercosur also had difficulties in negotiating in certain sectors, like public procurement (that is still not part of the competence of the South American common market).
whereas the Latin American countries are scathing at the lack of any haste on the part of the Europeans to broach tariff and agricultural issues, the European negotiators send the ball back into their court by highlighting the lack of coordination between the members of Mercosur. "No progress can be achieved at political level without serious technical preparation", remarks a European negotiator.
According to Commissioner Patten, negotiations with Chile - country for which agricultural problems do not arise to the same extent - could progress more rapidly. "I do not see why these negotiations should be artificially slowed down", he remarked. In principle, an agreement could be concluded in 2002 already, says a European source. Chile concluded an association agreement with Mercosur in 1996 and negotiations have begun for its accession to the South American common market for 2010. The initial aim of the Europeans was to conduct both sets of negotiations in parallel to possibly reach a merger of the agreements should Chile join Mercosur.
The EU's interest lies in regaining ground faced with the project of a free-trade agreement on the American continent (Nafta), for which negotiations should in principle end in 2005. In that context, "I hope that the pressure of European investors and industrialists will contribute in moving negotiations forward", Commissioner Patten stressed..
The European Union is currently Mercosur and Chile's foremost trading partner, with a volume in trade of 49 billion euro in 1998. Brazil alone is the EU's 9th largest trading partner. The automobile (which will not be liberalised in Mercosur until 2006), chemicals and services (notably telecommunications) sectors are among the main sectors of interest for the EU in the region.