Lima, March 6, 2007.- Representatives of the Andean Community and of the European Union reaffirmed yesterday, at a High-Level Meeting held in Lima, their commitment to shortly start bloc-to-bloc negotiations that will conclude with the  signing of an Association Agreement.   

The meeting, which lasted until after 6 p.m., was chaired by Aldo Ruiz Rivero, Vice-Minister for Economic Relations and Foreign Trade of Bolivia, who represented the CAN Chair Pro tempore, and Tomás Duplá del Moral and Joao Aguiar Machado, Directors for Latin America of the Directorate General for Trade and the Directorate General of Foreign Affairs of the European Commission, respectively. 

The two parties agreed to attribute the highest political importance to this Association Agreement, whose basic pillars will be Political Dialogue, Cooperation and Trade, and stressed that they expected the Agreement to contribute to the struggle against poverty in general and to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. 

The General Secretariat reported at the meeting on the accomplishment of the commitments assumed in the areas of customs, transport, services and the starting point for tariff reduction and was congratulated by the European Commission for its efforts.   

The Representatives of the European Commission, for their part, explained the advances made in defining the negotiation guidelines, which are presently under discussion by the Council of Ministers of the European Union, and announced the performance of an analysis of the social, economic and environmental impact of the proposed Agreement. 

Participating in the meeting were the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia,  Camilo Reyes; the Director General for Trade Negotiations and Integration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador, Humberto Jiménez Torres; and the Vice-Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of Foreign Trade of Peru, Gonzalo Gutiérrez and Luis Alonso García, respectively, and the Head of the Latin American Integration Unit of the Vice-Ministry of Economic Relations and Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship of Bolivia, Helena de Rico, together with the CAN Secretary General, Freddy Ehlers.