Lima, July 15, 2005

Over the past three decades, the European Union and the Andean Community have progressively established important biregional links aimed at consolidating a strategic relationship over the next few years.

This new strategic relationship has to do with the fact that, parallel to the trade and investment flows that are important today because the European Union is the Andean Community’s foremost investor and second most important trading partner, we have been able to build a shared vision of issues of fundamental importance to our common future in the context of globalization. The core element of this shared vision is the attainment of social cohesion through greater development and well being in socially inclusive and equitable conditions as the foundation for more democratic governance in our countries.

Today we find ourselves in a new phase of rapprochement between the two regional blocs --perhaps the most decisive of recent years-- thanks to the signing of the new Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (Rome, 2003) and the announcement at the Guadalajara Summit (2004) of the joint assessment process that should lead to the signing of an Association Agreement that will include the formation of a free trade area.

The Andean Community has decided to take the necessary action to move in that direction. The meeting of the EU-CAN Joint Committee in January of this year and the first meeting, in April, of the Technical Group on the Joint Assessment are moving us toward the goal of being able to launch formal negotiations for the Association and free trade Agreement at the next Summit of the EU and Latin America and the Caribbean, scheduled to take place in Vienna in March 2006, although undoubtedly much still remains to be done internally.

We have also made significant progress toward defining the guidelines for the new CAN-EU cooperation program for 2007-2013, using an approach that will allow us to advance toward building a partnership in areas that are of strategic interest to the two regions, such as democratic governance and social cohesion, the environment, energy, the fight against the world drug problem, the promotion of small and medium-size enterprises and the territorial dimension of competitiveness --all of this within the context of deepening Andean integration.

Your pleasant visit to these headquarters today, with the presence of executives of the Andean Integration System organs and institutions, is an expression of the strategic new relationship we are building. It is also a reaffirmation of the essential principles that link up the Andean Community and the European Union for the purpose, always present, of strengthening an international community grounded in international law, human rights, democracy and a new multilateralism that will help lay strong foundations for a solidary and multipolar world that would be guarantee peace and development for all.

Thank-you very much.