Address by the President of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe, at the opening of the First Round of Negotiations between the Andean Community and the European Union

Bogotá, September 17, 2007

“I would like to thank all of you for accompanying us at the formal launching of these negotiations.  Truth to tell, it took us quite some time to reach this point. This process calls for political will, perseverance and patience.   We have all the political will in the world, we have persevered and we have exercised a great deal of patience to reach this point, but, starting today, we will have to be impatient in order to achieve this agreement in the shortest time possible.   

Please allow me to say a few words as President pro tempore of the Andean Community and President of Colombia, who welcomes you today with all affection.   

Five years ago, we in the Andean Community considered that an agreement with Mercosur was impossible.  The attitudes were both indifference and resistance.  This agreement was already in effect in many places, and in others there was no interest in it.   

We set ourselves to get the agreement off the ground and did so.  And now the deadlines are rapidly approaching; although some asymmetries were negotiated, the deadlines are being met.    

I believe it offered a great opportunity to move ahead with the integration of our South American continent.  Four years ago, we started to build the South American union; it is gaining ground and we trust that day-by-day we are moving toward its materialization.   

The Andean Community can once again count on Chile as a member.  This is an extraordinary step.  Chile was one of its founders and circumstances led to its withdrawal in a search for a more rapid means of reaching international trade agreements.   

Chile’s return must help give us a clearer vision and to be more dynamic in taking a place in growing world trade.    

I trust that we will shortly be able to announce the formal return of our sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the Andean Community.   

Please allow me to send this message: All of us here know in our deepest hearts that Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia are here today on behalf of the Andean Community, but that we have a space reserved here for Venezuela and feel assured that with Venezuela’s presence and full return to the Andean Community, we will be able to carry these negotiations to a successful conclusion.   

Our Foreign Ministers and the Secretary General of the Andean Community, Freddy Ehlers, who have brought enormous enthusiasm to the undertaking so that we can move ahead with the process, are with us today.  Now it is our Ministers of Economy and Trade who must work to bring other States into the Andean Community as associate members like Chile.    

Colombia and Peru have both signed agreements with Chile.  Now Colombia and Peru are proposing a bilateral agreement to deepen the decisions, treaties and legislation that link us up multilaterally within the Andean Community in order remove all barriers to investment.    

Five years ago, Colombia applied for membership in the Puebla-Panama Plan and was accepted. We took that step to fulfill the obligation stemming from our geographic location as the bridge between Central America, the vision of Mesoamerica and our South America.  We trust that membership in the Puebla-Panama Plan will be opened to all countries to the south and that our Andean sister nations will begin to consider the possibility of joining the Puebla-Panama Plan.    

Just a few days ago, Colombia and Peru started to negotiate with Canada --an important exponent of universal democracy-- and are pleased to see how enthusiastic all of our Andean sister nations are about those negotiations.     

We trust that we will be able to move ahead with agreements with China and with India for reciprocal protection of our investments and are seeking to join up with all of the world’s economies.

We participate strongly in the Pacific, where some of our sister nations belong to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC) and others don’t.  We are concerned that the moratorium on new membership has not been lifted and that, in fact, its consideration has been put off again, this time to 2010 because we all have a legitimate interest, as Pacific Basin countries, in becoming members of that organization.    

We are now, after having strived for a long time, beginning this process with the European Union.   

The unilateral preferences are incomplete and their time frame still uncertain.  They are barely a few cautious privileges for the entry of products into a market, but lack a plan for cooperation and political dialogue.  Furthermore, the uncertain nature of these preferences keeps investment from materializing.   

Those who are planning to invest first consider whether access to the markets is guaranteed for the long term is or merely a temporary privilege.   

Investors will have no confidence in the Andean Community if the privilege it is given to place products in the European Union is only a temporary one.     

But they will have confidence in our countries if they are notified that an agreement, which we are now beginning to negotiate, guarantees access to the European Union.

I consider extremely important the fact that this agreement is not merely a trade agreement, but also one on cooperation, on political dialogue.

Cooperation and political dialogue on issues as significant as those referred to by the Deputy Director General of Foreign Affairs of the European Union, Mr. Joao Aguiar Machado.

Political dialogue and cooperation in order to advance in the fight against global warming, to overcome poverty definitively, to win the war on drugs.   

We look with optimism upon this agreement, which is not typical because of the elements it includes.  I would respectfully recommend to the Andean Community’s negotiating team that it speed up the negotiations insofar as possible.  Every day that passes without moving ahead with concrete measures to overcome poverty is one more day of suffering for our nations.    

I can see that there is confidence among all of the Andean countries and the European Union.  We should take advantage of that confidence to hasten these negotiations.   

In am concerned that a 24-month deadline be set, as of today, for the conclusion of the negotiations.  This is not the first agreement to be negotiated by the European Union, nor is the first that we are negotiating.  We should be capable of shortening the timeframe.   

Lastly, we all have an idea of where we want to arrive.  If we are all capable of having a fairly good idea of where we have to arrive, then why delay the arrival at that point; why not shorten the deadlines?

For us, these trade agreements are not ideological categories, nor are they born from political values.  They are opportunities for our nations; they are opportunities to overcome poverty, to build equity, to give our nations easier access to frontier technology, easier access to markets with a high capacity for consumption.   

These agreements are opportunities to create high quality employment, with social security affiliation.  They are opportunities for entrepreneurship to flourish.

A trade agreement accompanied by political dialogue is a guarantee that the benefits must be tied in directly with overcoming poverty and achieving equity.   

A student was asking me: ‘What do you mean by trade agreement with the European Union plus political dialogue?’ I told him:  ‘We understand that the political dialogue will include the overcoming of poverty and that, therefore, we are going to move toward that goal on two related fronts: those of dialogue and of economic reality.”   

Although there are differences among the economies and it is more urgent for some of them than for others to reach those agreements, in the end everyone benefits.  Furthermore, if the European Union has demonstrated anything, it is that it has been incorporating many of the world’s countries with institutions and in equitable conditions.  That must give us more confidence.   

There are some who still think that the imperative of stimulating the domestic economy by giving the large masses of people who have been excluded a role to play in it and trade agreements are mutually exclusive.   

That is not the case; rather, they complement each other.  Trade agreements boost investment, offer markets, create more opportunities, which, if well directed, can insert the large excluded masses in our countries into the vigorously growing economy and put them on the proper courses to overcome poverty and build equity.    

How good it would be if this were to occur not within two years, but before that.  That we could all sit down and say:  ‘These negotiations have been concluded satisfactorily.’  And to give our nations that reason for optimism, for tranquility.   

Last week, 1,500 Colombians accepted a commitment: to build a national consensus on a productive society, as one of the courses for reaching an equitable society.   

These courses help make those purposes a reality.  These trade agreements create opportunities, but also pose challenges:  the challenge to concern ourselves with and to strive more strongly for productivity, for competitiveness; for turning social discourse into reality; for applying environmental protection policies that go beyond mere talk.  In short, everything is advisable.      

On behalf of my Andean colleagues, I would like to thank the European Union heartedly for having permitted us to launch these negotiations today.  And I wish the negotiators the best of luck.   

I would like to note that when we were studying the candidacy of Freddy Ehlers for Secretary General of the Andean Community in Rio de Janeiro, I said to him:  ‘Dear Freddy, we are very enthusiastic about your candidacy.  Help us rapidly start these negotiations with the European Union.’   

And Freddy has done so.  But now we have another job for him.  I’ve run out of excuses on this issue and you’re in an even greater predicament.   Neither you nor I have the time any longer to wait 24 months.  Let us carry out these negotiations rapidly because our countries need that agreement urgently.   

Thank-you very much”.