Address by Andean Community Secretary General Sebastián Alegrett on the Thirty-Second Anniversary of the signing of the Cartagena Agreement
Lima, May 28, 2001

With the ratification of the Trujillo Protocol in 1997, the Andean Community’s new institutional structure was implemented and I was accorded the honor of assuming the leadership of the General Secretariat that replaced the former Board of the Cartagena Agreement, endowed with all of its powers and jurisdictions.

This is the first time in almost four years that we have the privilege and pleasure of receiving the President of Peru. Your visit, at this anniversary celebration, is an unmistakable demonstration of your government’s commitment to Andean integration, which has become a basic pillar of its foreign policy. Peru’s participation, in the person of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Foreign Minister, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, has been vital in attaining the necessary political impetus to return to a deepening of our process and to convert it into a spokesman worthy of consideration in the various forums for international negotiations currently in operation.

The Peruvian Foreign Minister’s initiative of calling a Special Meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers last March was very important in this undertaking, for it made it possible to examine with absolute freedom and in depth the issues that are working against our essential political cohesion. The meeting of Andean Presidents held subsequently in Cartagena, Colombia, once again pointed up the outstanding ability of Peru and of its illustrious Foreign Minister to harmonize efforts.

As you are well aware, Mr. President, integration is a process that is born of an unwavering political will. In the case of the Andean countries, this assertion is even more dramatic, for despite sharing a single language and the bases for a common culture, they have never enjoyed any significant economic or commercial ties, unlike the members of other integration processes. Our Presidents and among them Fernando Belaúnde, who in 1966 signed the Declaration of Bogota –the direct forerunner of the Cartagena Agreement— rescued a historical mandate passed down to us with his inspired vision by the Libertador Simón Bolívar.

We have persevered in this effort for thirty-two years, moving ahead and falling back as our vulnerable economies reeled under the impact of external shocks and disruptions of the constitutional order produced unfavorable political situations on the domestic front. Developments of this kind were responsible for Chile’s withdrawal from the Andean Pact in a three-year process starting in September 1973 and for Peru’s estrangement from subregional integration as a result of President Fujimori’s self-coup in 1992. The attitude of that government towards integration turned passive, if not reluctant and, one could even say, hostile. It was not until June 1997, when Peru’s withdrawal appeared to be imminent, that its departure from our community of nations was able to be prevented.

During the years that Peru remained aloof from the integration process, it ceased to implement the Liberalization Program and did not adopt the Common External Tariff. This kept the country from benefiting from the expanded market and other advantages of the process that are designed to help boost non-traditional exports.

That is why Peru’s exports to the Andean subregion, at barely 6.6% of the total, lagged far behind those of the other member countries, despite showing a growth of 29% as compared with a 14% increase in its worldwide exports. Even so, the Andean area, as an economic zone, is the country’s third ranking market following NAFTA and the European Union and receives far more than Peru exports to Mercosur and neighboring countries like Chile.

The same can be said of the country’s imports. The Andean Community is Peru’s second provider after NAFTA and far outranks the European Union, Mercosur and Chile in this area. With this rebirth of democracy which you more than anyone else embodies, Mr. President, what can we expect, but an active and participatory Peru that will help to energize our integration?

Our Andean Community matures day by day as shared and realistically oriented equitable economic, social and political development takes root. The only "ism," as a grammatical element of composition, that we practice is "open regionalism," which sets us apart from all political and economic extremism, such as "protectionism " or "neoliberalism."

Our Customs Union is not yet fully operational. Bolivia enjoys special treatment and Peru does not participate in this rate-fixing instrument. Even so, subregional free trade has expanded considerably as a result of the juridical soundness of the Community’s body of law. This trade, ninety percent of which is in products with a high value added, may this year reach a figure of six billion dollars. Our investments, land and ocean transport, and air and telephone communication frequencies have proliferated.

By the year 2005, the Andean Presidential Council expects to have a Common Market in place as the Andean space for the free circulation of goods, services, capital and people. We have already set the priorities of the tasks to be carried out by the General Secretariat in order to achieve this ambitious objective.

To start off, we have submitted four proposals on which the governments should hand down their decision at the next Regular Meeting of the Andean Presidential Council. Significant progress has been made on two of them, those concerning the Free Circulation of People and Border Integration and Development Policies, which are to be considered shortly by the Council of Foreign Ministers. The other two, which the Commission must reach an agreement on, have to do with the Andean Common Agricultural Policy and a new Common External Tariff to give our Customs Union a more up-to-date and appropriate grounding.

In regard to the latter, lower levels of protection than the existing ones and a considerable reduction in tariff spread have been proposed as a means of boosting productivity and promoting the competitiveness of subregional production in both subregional and third markets. Approval of this new version of the tariff instrument would facilitate its adoption by Bolivia and by Peru in particular, considering the guidelines followed in the country’s recent tariff reform.

As we have deepened our integration, we have also successfully met the challenges posed by globalization. Models based on closed and self-sufficient processes have been discarded. We have shown ourselves to be capable of coordinating common stands and defining single spokesmanships in international negotiations, the most important of which today are Mercosur and the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Integration is not confined to economic and commercial issues, but also has political and social dimensions. In the political arena, we have been able to define a Common Foreign Policy agenda that will allow the Community to participate as a whole on the international scene and to take part in the debate on the major issues affecting the lives of nations.

Furthermore, in a return to our own history, we have put into effect a Democratic Clause that commits the Andean Community to keep democracy and the constitutional state alive.

If anything has been lacking in our integration movement, it has been the conversion of our efforts into strong and effective cooperation in striving to fulfill the social demands of our nations. A major objective of integration is to improve the quality of life of our people and that calls for putting together a social agenda that contains clearly defined priorities.

It is also necessary, however, to deal with the poor level of participation in the Andean process. Integration requires the active involvement of not only governments and entrepreneurs, but also of society at all levels. It is our task to develop the instruments that will allow Andean men and women to find in integration the means for attaining their life projects.

This, in a nutshell, Mr. President, is what we have accomplished and what lies ahead of us. The progress we have made is truly important, despite criticisms and frustrations that have been voiced and which are frequently exaggerated. But what still remains to be done is staggering. We must build a common market; we must maintain our political unity in order to be equipped to take part in that phenomenon known as globalization in the most favorable conditions possible; we must find an answer to the increasingly pressing social demands of our peoples and we must ensure that the citizens at large are given a voice in our integration. Only in that way can we feel that we are truly fulfilling the mandate passed down to us by history and the Libertador’s dream of our union.