CAN and EU launch negotiation of new political dialogue and cooperation agreement

Lima, May 6, 2003. The Andean Community and the European Union today started negotiating a new Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement that will lay the groundwork for the future signing of an Association Agreement encompassing a free trade area between the two regions.

Andean Community Secretary General, Guillermo Fernández de Soto, declared that the new agreement “will mark the beginning of the fourth stage of a fruitful and promising strategic association between the two regions that is aimed at endowing relations between the two blocks with stability and juridical security.”

Fernández de Soto spoke at the opening ceremony of the First Round of negotiations for the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and the Andean Community, in Brussels (Belgium), which was attended by CAN and EU representatives.

"I am of the opinion that the negotiation of a fourth generation agreement should be flexible enough to enable us to move ahead decisively in deepening the political dialogue, cooperation and the establishment of a free trade area,” he stressed, after referring to the former stages in the process of transformation of CAN-EU cooperation.

The Secretary General explained that the fourth stage of cooperation, which is already in the offing, “will use the significant accomplishments and advances of Andean integration as its starting point.” These have made it possible to formulate a second generation of policies providing for the execution of a multidimensional Andean subregional integration agenda.

Chris Patten, European Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, for his part, welcomed the new strategic direction being taken by subregional integration, as a demonstration of the efforts of the Andean Community to endow the integration process with a comprehensive agenda.

The Commissioner expressed his willingness to support these efforts, together with all measures that help reinforce regional integration, for in his view “this is the best formula for ensuring stability, prosperity and wealth.”

He concluded by declaring that the main purpose of the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement is to support Andean integration, for only by advancing the subregional process rapidly and heavily can CAN-EU relations move to a higher plane.