Free
Trade Agreements with the European Union in Latin America: A path
to the loss of sovereignty and territories
A group of Latin
American social organizations (1) met in Montevideo to examine the
Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that the European Union (EU) signed
last May with Central America, Colombia and Peru. Not only are these
FTAs a serious threat to the food sovereignty of the peoples, the
forests, the region’s main ecosystems and to artisan fisheries,
but they will also worsen climate change. The organizations warned
that the MERCOSUR (2) countries run the same risks following their
decision to re-initiate their negotiations with the EU at the end
of June.
These FTAs are
part of a strategy called “Global Europe,” implemented
by the EU since 2006 aimed at strengthening its large transnational
corporations worldwide.
The sectoral analysis
of FTA impacts show that they have put food sovereignty on the rack
and that they affect small-scale agriculture, artisan fisheries,
forests and other essential ecosystems and worsen the climate crisis.
These trade agreements with the EU are just as dangerous or even
more dangerous than the ones signed by the United States with Colombia,
Peru and Central America, and have the same objective: to step up
trade liberalization in wide sectors of Latin American economies
to the benefit of European corporations.
Some of the instruments
included in these FTAs are the liberalization of investments and
the service sector, the opening up of the agricultural sector, the
elimination of export barriers (both tariff and non-tariff barriers),
the strengthening of Intellectual Property Rights (patents) and
free access to State Purchases by European purveyors.
One of the examples
mentioned at the meeting was the case of the recent flooding of
the market in Colombia by European dairy products and the lethal
consequences this has had, particularly for small Colombian farmers.
The European Union had demanded for the dairy sector relief from
all tariffs for large quantities of European powdered milk and cheeses.
The new regulations also apply to Peru and the Central American
countries. In the case of Costa Rica, for example, acceptance of
this provision would be very damaging to the sector “as presently
it has ‘zero imports’ of dairy products.”
(3)
“These
measures will increase the presence of large corporations in the
agricultural sector. Industrialized agriculture with heavy machinery
and the use of agro-toxic chemicals will be further enhanced and,
added to seed patents, will be detrimental to family and peasant
farming. Food policies controlled by the international market will
continue to benefit corporations and damage the peoples’ food
sovereignty and their possibility to determine their local and national
food practices,” stated the Latin American social groups present
at the event.
They also pointed
out that the FTAs promoted by the EU will increase momentum in the
global South of timber extraction activities, agrofuels, agribusiness,
extensive stock-raising and monoculture tree plantations, which
have devastated forests and other important ecosystems such as grasslands
and also displaced local communities, particularly those of indigenous
peoples. The European race to access all types of natural resources
and seize biodiversity, added to unrestrained economic activities,
threatens to eliminate the continent’s remaining forests.
The social organizations
warned that small-scale artisan fisheries, which are essential for
food sovereignty and for feeding the people, also run risks. The
large European corporations already occupy dominant positions in
the Latin American fisheries and fish-farming sector, controlling
the trade of such species as shrimps, tuna, and tilapia. Their absolutely
unsustainable trawling is already serious today and the trade measures
defending the fishing corporations are detrimental to the possibilities
of small scale fisher-folk who capture fewer and fewer fish.
Finally, the Latin
American groups pointed out that the conditions imposed by the EU
during the negotiations strengthen the increasing implementation
of false solutions to climate change in our countries: development
of transgenic plants, agrofuels, projects for the Reduction of Emissions
from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), together with
tree plantations to trap and store carbon, and dams. These measures
divert attention away from what is really necessary to face the
climate crisis: the radical reduction by industrialized countries
of green-house gas effect emissions.
Furthermore, these
agreements are incompatible with the United Nations Declaration
on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples and with the International
Labour Organization’s Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal
Peoples, because the requisite of prior consultations with the indigenous
communities has not been fulfilled. This was denounced by the Andean
Coordinator for Indigenous Organizations (Coordinadora Andina de
Organizaciones Indígenas - CAOI), adding that the governments
of Colombia and Peru had issued no information during the whole
negotiation process.
“The
FTAs that the EU is promoting in Latin America are another turn
of the screw to ensure security for its corporations and the abusive
consumer patterns of its countries. The beneficiaries in our region
will be a few economically powerful groups and the disadvantaged
groups will be our peoples. The Central American, Colombian, Peruvian
and MERCOSUR parliamentarians are still in time to curb this serious
European advance against our future as sovereign peoples,”
stressed the organizations present in Montevideo.
(1) The Colombian
“Grupo Semillas”, the Ecuadorian Mangrove Network, the
Andean Project for Peasant Technologies in Peru, the Brazilian CEPEDES,
the World Rainforest Movement and REDES-Friends of the Earth in
Uruguay.
(2) The Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) comprises Argentina,
Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay while Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador,
Peru and Venezuela are Associate States to the bloc.
(3) Taken from one of the documents prepared by REDES for this event.
Article based on
information from Redes – Friends of the Earth Uruguay. The
documents may be requested from Jose Elosegui, e-mail: jelosegui@gmail.com
