CAN and EU bring technical phase of the joint assessment
of the regional integration process to a satisfactory conclusion

Lima, November 11, 2005.- The Andean Community and the European Union this afternoon concluded the technical phase of the joint assessment of the regional integration process satisfactorily and are now preparing to draw up a joint report for presentation at the next meeting of the Mixed Andean-European Commission scheduled for this coming January.

That report should contain the necessary technical elements for deciding to launch negotiations for a CAN-EU association agreement that would include a free trade area at the LAC-EU Summit to be held in Vienna in May 2006.

The joint assessment technical phase was brought to a close at the Third Meeting of the CAN-EU Ad hoc Working Group that took place this Thursday and Friday in Caracas at the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry. The Meeting was chaired by the Vice-Minister of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Light Industry and Trade of Venezuela, Róger Figueroa, on behalf of the CAN, and on behalf of the EU, the Deputy Director General of Trade of the European Commission, Karl F. Falkenberg.

Attending the Meeting were high-level representatives of the Andean countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela), of the European Commission and of the Andean Community General Secretariat, headed by its Secretary General, Ambassador Allan Wagner Tizón.

Róger Figueroa, Venezuela’s Vice-Minister of Foreign Trade, explained that this third meeting completed the program of mutual rapprochement and recognition at which the CAN and the EU explained their legal, institutional and commercial systems, among others, in order to determine the desirability of this relationship.

The representative of the European Union at the Meeting, Karl F. Falkenberg, Deputy Director General of Trade of the European Commission, for his part, observed that the purpose of the exercise had been to achieve a better understanding of the integration efforts under way in the Andean region. "This is the third meeting and we have realized that many positive steps have been taken,” he pointed out.

The CAN-EU Ad hoc Group met on two previous occasions to examine the technical aspects of the joint assessment: on April 4 and 5, 2005, in Lima, Peru and on July 25 and 26 of that same year, in Brussels, Belgium.

The purpose of the joint assessment --agreed upon at the EU-LAC Summit in Guadalajara in May 2004 and officially launched in Brussels last January at the Meeting of the Mixed Andean-European Commission, is to lay the groundwork for making the negotiation of an association agreement between the two trading blocs viable.