Moeilijke kwesties bij EU-LAC top (en) - Hoofdinhoud
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The validity of European farm subsidies and rights over the Falkland Islands were among the thorny issues to resurface at a summit meeting between European Union and Latin American leaders in Madrid on Tuesday (18 May).
The event had earlier been earmarked as one of the highlights of the Spanish EU presidency, with the country's embattled prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero i, keen to use the occasion to bolster his international credentials amid falling domestic approval ratings.
The Socialist leader was rebuffed by US President Barack Obama i in February when a planned EU-US summit, also to be held in Madrid, was cancelled, and now faces the prospect of public sector strikes after recently announcing fresh austerity measures.
Trade in a globalised world was the dominant theme of Tuesday's meeting, with leaders committing to "avoid protectionism in all its forms" in their final communique. The two sides also pledged to strengthen co-operation on issues such as immigration and fighting drug trafficking.
"In an increasingly globalised world where the source of prosperity lies in uniting efforts, the capacity for economic growth lies in openness and liberalisation," said Mr Zapatero.
Just prior to the summit's opening, EU and Central American states eventually signed off on the trade 'pillar' of an Association Agreement between the two sides after three years of negotiations.
The agreement constitutes the first of its kind for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, and will aim for "100 percent market opening for industrial products on both sides," said a concluding statement.
Worries over agriculture had threatened to derail the talks, with negotiators ultimately agreeing to set specific quotas for cheese and milk powder from Europe and for bananas, beef and rice from central America.
The pact also comes despite continued worries over human rights abuses by the Honduran government, whose new president was elected via a ballot organised by coup leaders. This week a 27-year-old leading member of the anti-coup self-styled resistance, Gilberto Alexander Núñez Ochoa, was shot by armed assassins.
Protest
The EU also initialed free trade deals with Peru and Colombia this week after talks with the wider Andean Nations bloc, including Bolivia and Ecuador, broke down when the former boycotted negotiations in 2007 and the latter left in 2009 due to disagreements over the EU's intellectual property demands.
MEPs and human rights groups have been critical of the Colombian agreement in particular, pointing to the high number of trade unionist murders in the country.
The groups also used the summit to highlight cases of suspected corporate abuses carried out by European firms operating in Latin America. A collection of judges, human rights lawyers and activists, known as the Permanent Peoples Tribunal (PPT), urged the EU to establish a legal framework that enables firms to be held accountable for crimes committed in the region.
The Spanish energy company Unión Fenosa, Swedish-Finnish forestry corporation Stora Enso and Swiss cement company Holcim were singled out for bad practices that the PTT says include persecution and assassination of community leaders and environmental destruction.
Tensions also surrounded the restarting of trade talks between the EU and the South American trade bloc Mercosur, which takes in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay.
In a sign that the talks may not fare much better than previous attempts, 10 EU nations lead by France warned last week that their strategic farming interests must not be compromised by any eventual deal. Negotiations between the two sides originally started in 1999 but broke down in 2004.
Argentine President Cristina Kirchner also cautioned that the negotiations would be "difficult" due to "protectionist" tendencies of some European nations, while the EU says a deal could add about €5 billion of exports a year.
The Falklands
Ms Kirchner also used the occasion in Madrid to return to a long-standing dispute between the Buenos Aires and London, namely ownership of the Falkland Islands, situated off the Argentine coast in the southern Atlantic.
"I would like to request that we please resume our negotiations on sovereignty over the Malvinas," she said, referring to the islands as they are known in Argentina, after first congratulating David Cameron i on becoming the UK's new prime minister.
The UK first established its rule on the islands as far back as the 19th century. In 1982, the then-military government in Argentina occupied the two main islands, sparking an armed conflict that lasted several months and which claimed roughly 900 lives.