They also warned that the MERCOSUR countries (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) run the same risks after the decision to resume the negotiations with the EU for a similar agreement.

The Seeds Group of Colombia, the Mangrove Network of Ecuador, the Andean Project of Peasant Technologies of Peru, CEPEDES of Brazil, the World Rainforest Movement and REDES – Friends of the Earth Uruguay, issued a press release last week rejecting the FTA signed between the EU and the countries of the region. Those trade agreements, which should be ratified by the national parliaments are part of a strategy called “Global Europe”, implemented by the EU since 2006 to strengthen its big transnational corporations around the world.

The Latin American organizations claim that the analyses of the potential impacts of FTAs on forests, food sovereignty, fisheries and climate change show that the EU reached agreements with Colombia, Peru and Central America as dangerous or even more dangerous than the ones signed by these countries with the US. The aim is the same: to further trade liberalization in strategic sectors of the Latin American economies to benefit European corporations.

Some of the instruments of these FTAs are the liberalization of investments, the services sector, the opening of the agriculture sector, the elimination of export (both tariff and non-tariff) barriers, and the opening up of Latin American state procurement to European suppliers.

The social organizations say that “These measures will increase the presence of big agriculture corporations. The industrialized agriculture, with big machinery and use of agrotoxics, will be strengthened, adding the patents on seeds to the detriment of family and peasant farming. The food policies controlled by the international market will continue benefiting the corporations and damaging the peoples’ food sovereignty, its possibilities of establishing their own local and domestic food practices”.

They also say that the FTAs promoted by the EU will imply a boost for the wood extractive activity, agrofuel production, extensive cattle farming, tree monocultures, agribusiness in general, which depletes forests and has displaced indigenous communities in the developing countries.

The social organizations added that small fishing production, which is essential for food sovereignty, is also at stake. The big European corporations already have hegemonic positions in the fishing and aquaculture sectors in Latin America, they control the shrimp, tuna and tilapia industry.

Its capture through bottom trawling is totally unsustainable and the trade measures that favor the big fishing corporations damage the possibilities of small fisher folk, which get less and less captures.

Finally, the Latin American groups said the terms imposed by the EU in the negotiations will reinforce the already growing implementation of false solutions to climate change in Latin American countries, such as GM crops, agrofuels, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) and clean development mechanisms (CDM) like tree plantations for carbon capture and storage, and dams. These measures divert the attention from what is really necessary to tackle the climate crisis: that the industrialized nations have to reduce their polluting emissions.

These FTAs also go against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, because the communities were not previously consulted about these projects.

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