Brussels, 19/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - Europeans and Canadians will celebrate at the Summit that will take place this Thursday in Stockholm, the 25th anniversary of an increasingly close and relatively serene cooperation, centred from the outset in the economic sphere and which today extends to politics, including security and global problems such as global warming. The ratification of the Kyoto Protocol is one of the "hot" dossiers of current international scene- with the launching of the next round of WTO negotiations - on which the Union hopes to achieve a transatlantic declaration from this meeting, to which will take part the acting President of the European Council, the Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, the Commission President Romano Prodi, the High Representative for CFSP Javier Solana and the Commissioner for Trade Pascal Lamy, as well as the Prime Minister Jean Chretien, the Minister for Foreign Affairs John Manley and the Minister for International Trade Pierre Pettigrew, for the Canadian half.
The summit will open in the morning with a half-hour meeting at the highest level, followed by simultaneous meetings by the Ministers for Foreign Affairs and for Trade. In the political field where the tone is generally consensual, the talks concentrated on the developments seen on both sides of the Atlantic in terms of security and defence, the progress of reforms in Russia and in the Ukraine, as well as the escalation of conflicts in the Middle East and in the Western Balkans. The European and Canadian leaders for Foreign Affairs will then approve the joint report on the Nordic dimension of cooperation and fine-tune the joint statements concerning non-proliferation and arms control, Euro-Canadian cooperation in the framework of the UN and, possible also, climatic change.
Their counterparts for trade must also as for them look at the state of progress of the preparations for a new round of negotiations in the WTO, in view of adopting a joint declaration as detailed as possible in view of the Doha Ministerial conference next autumn. Mr Lamy will, no doubt, take advantage to once more invite Canada to overcome its final reservations and rally to the "Everything but arms" initiative through which the Union promises to the poorest countries on the planet an access free from duties and quotas to its market, in exchange for its support to their full integration into the world trade system. For his part, Mr. Pettigrew envisages handing in a study highlighting the benefits of bilateral trade liberalization, a document that seems to come in the perspective of a free trade area and which, at this still early stage, raises reservations on the European side on a "tariff" approach which has been rather overtaken by the multiplication of wide ranging free trade agreements and the already consequential reduction in customs duties.
Some points of disagreement between the EU and Canada were also broached by Ministers, notably the laborious negotiations over wines and spirits (where the atmosphere is, however, improving, sources in Brussels say), talks within the OECD on export credits, the draft European legislation on GMOs and the affair of pine nematode that could still degenerate into an open dispute within the WTO, despite possible progress on the basis of an alternative approach to guarantee the quality of the imports of Canadian wood into the Union.
A plenary session will close the meeting late morning. The leaders and ministers should continue the morning talks on climate change, broach the issue of transmissible illnesses and mark the 25th anniversary of the framework-agreement on economic and trade cooperation between the Union and Canada, before initialing joint texts and documents of the Summit.