Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-09-Speech-1-128"
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"en.20050509.18.1-128"2
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"Mr President, on behalf of my colleague, Mrs Ferrero-Waldner, I would like to make a statement on the negotiations between the European Union and Mercosur.
Despite the progress made over recent years, these negotiations have been in deadlock since October 2004. At that point, it was considered that the offers of the two parties did not allow our high ambitions for that agreement to be achieved. At the ministerial meeting in Lisbon in October, the Ministers decided to take the time to reflect on how to relaunch the process.
In January 2005, Presidents Barroso and Lulla da Silva met in Davos. The two Presidents stressed the strategic importance they attach to an association agreement between the European Union and Mercosur. We should remember that the negotiations began with an ambitious, indeed strategic, objective: to construct a strong alliance between the two blocks, which have much in common, including parallel visions of the international order. The two Presidents agreed that, if we wished to make progress with the negotiations on the commercial aspects, they should be based on the best offers exchanged at that point by the two partners.
The idea of restarting the negotiations on the basis of the best offers was largely taken up and supported by all the European Union and Mercosur negotiators at the EU-Mercosur Business Forum in February. A technical meeting took place on 21 and 22 March to prepare for the ministerial meeting that was to restart the negotiations. At that meeting, Mercosur refused to confirm the best offers exchanged. It expressed the view that they would be too favourable to the European Union and that confirming them would increase the supposed imbalance. Our objective is to convince Mercosur to allow the negotiations to progress quickly. This is essential, in fact, since certain Mercosur partners could be tempted to focus exclusively on the negotiations within the WTO and then to finalise a bi-regional agreement.
At this stage, I would like to point out that we entirely disagree with Mercosur’s view that the offers on the table are too favourable to the European Union. Firstly, with regard to access to the market, the Union’s offer is the most generous ever made in terms of the products it covers and the timetable for dismantling tariffs. In particular, the Union’s offer on agricultural products is the most substantial that has ever been made in any bilateral agreement. Secondly, in relation to rules, Mercosur has refused to make an offer on public contracts or to include a chapter on intellectual property rights. It has refused to accept the principle of appropriate protection of the European Union’s geographical indications. As for Mercosur’s offer on services, it does not even consolidate the current level of liberalisation.
Having said that, we believe that only a ministerial meeting would allow the dialogue to be relaunched. The preparations for this meeting are underway. To this end, we are maintaining close contacts with our Mercosur partners. Our efforts are essentially focused on the stage reached by the technical preparations and Mercosur’s level of commitment to substantial discussions, since our ambition at this stage is to prevent a downwards spiral and to avoid jeopardising the progress already made.
Our partners, in particular Mr Amorin, the Brazilian Minister for Foreign Affairs, have repeated publicly on several occasions that Mercosur wished to keep all the options open, including therefore the bi-regional negotiations with the European Union and the Free Trade Area of the Americas Agreement, while making the negotiations within the WTO their main priority.
Our objective, therefore, is to seek to maintain a communication channel until our partners have a sufficiently clear picture of the potential results of the negotiations within the WTO. The Commission remains committed to putting these negotiations back on track, with the aim of reaching an ambitious and balanced agreement. To this end, we hope that a ministerial meeting will take place before the end of July."@en1
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