Bilateral agreements will be signed with Columbia und Peru before the end of the year, said the new Trade Commissioner at the beginning of the debate with MEPs in the Trade Commission of the European Parliament. Many labour organisations such as AK EUROPA were in particular very critical of an agreement with Columbia. There had been repeated human rights violations. Columbia is the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists: a labour representative is murdered in Columbia almost every week. AK EUROPA therefore demands to suspend all negotiations and a comprehensive examination of the human rights situation.

A communication on the Global Europe strategy would be published in June or July, said the liberal Belgian EU Trade Commissioner. He would regard it as a central task to finalize the Doha Round, as this multilateral agreement would bring with it a number of advantages. The bilateral agenda would also be given high priority.

The EU 2020 Strategy, which was recently published by the Commission, would already specify that one had to pay particular attention to threshold countries. That is why one would concentrate this year in particular on Asia and Latin America. Singapore, for example, was an important trading partner; the relevant negotiations were already well advanced. Negotiations were also ongoing with Vietnam. In addition, De Gucht would like to sign the Free Trade Agreement with India this year. He is hoping to finalize the agreements with Peru and Columbia before the end of the year. The negotiations with the Mercosur community of states, which include part of Latin America and South America, could be resumed. They had an interesting market, because their growth rates were high. However, Mercosur would have to make concessions with regard to industrial products, intellectual property, designations of origin and other areas. The Commissioner took the opportunity of saying that from his point of view, receiving a new mandate by Council and Parliament would not be necessary.

Countries, with whom no bilateral agreement existed had still the option of participating in the so-called system of tariff preferences, called ASP+ in expert jargon, in order to benefit from tariff reductions. The Commissioner announced that an initiative would be published in the coming weeks, which would extend the current ASP+ system. This was promptly criticised by the MEPs, who have been campaigning for a review of this system for weeks. Commissioner De Gucht, however, emphasised that countries that wanted to benefit from tariff reduction had to adhere to social und environmental targets.

The debate of Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht can only be viewed with mixed feelings. Concerning the agreement with Columbia, he demonstrated his very liberal streak, where obviously trade takes priority over human rights. The statement too only the Commission had the right of initiative shows that he obviously does not tolerate any interference. It remains to be seen which trade policy the European Union will have to deal with in the next five years.

Further information:

AK EUROPA position paper on the Association Agreement EU-Columbia 

AK EUROPA position paper on a binding sustainability chapter