Hi, how are you friends of the IECR blog?

I like to inform you that today the association agreement between Central America and the European Union has been achieved after discussions which finished in the early morning hours. According to the Costa Rican Ministry of Foreign Trade many efforts had to be made in order to achieve an important degree of tolerance. However, the entire negotiation has been profitable.

Let us remind that this process of reaching an agreement started with many ups and downs on April 23, 2007 during which Central America and the European Union confirm the intention of starting the negotiations for the association agreement. From then on, these negotiations experience a long-lasting standstill which is the result of the big differences between the Central American countries to which the problem of the political power in Honduras had to be added.

According to the Costa Rican Ministry of Foreign Trade Carla González, the negotiations required “oxygen masks” in the most critical moments as they were the morning hours of Sunday and Monday when the differences between the Central Americans and the pressure for the near closing of the meeting collided.

Amongst the aims achieved is that 90 % of the Costa Rican products will enter immediately  the European Union (EU) without paying tariff.On the other hand, only 50 % of the European products will enter immediately  the Costa Rican market without tax.

Costa Rica improved the access of banana and achieved quotes in order to sell textiles, sugar, rice and beef to the EU market which is the second of importance right after the US market.The isthmus will reduce the tax of products like wine, olives, chocolates, olive oil and alcoholic beverages.

Regarding defensive themes, Costa Rica achieved that the EU can sell only 200 yearly barrels of milk powder and 317 barrels of cheese per year. Furthermore Costa Rica didn´t give way to the initial insistence of the EU so as to bind to the regional institutions, in especially the Central American Court of Justice and the Central American Parliament, which are institutions to which Costa Rica does not belong to.

In addition, another goal achieved was that the European intentions to have non governmental organizations and groups of the civil society control the fulfilling of environmental and labor conditions were put aside. 

The tariff of 176 euros that the EU applies to the banana has been reduced to 75 euros per barrel from now on till 2020. What is more, the EU has opened a rate of seven millions of articles of clothing and another four millions of units of socks showing flexibility in regard of the raw material for their production that can be imported from any country of the world. Rates for products which had never been sold there have been opened.

In general, the final stroke demonstrates positive results for all the Central American countries.