Once more, international cooperation is the main element used to exert pressure, and official speeches include Spanish companies already installed in the South or aiming at it.

A few days ago, Juan Pablo de Laiglesia, State Secretary for Latin America of the Spanish Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Ministry, visited several MERCOSUR countries and pointed out that this was “the right moment to promote EU´s Latin American policies”.

According to him, the financial crisis should be the driving force for an Association Agreement between the European Union and MERCOSUR.

He also stated that the negotiations conditioned to the Doha Round results “have been paralyzed for too long”. In this way, Brussels is preparing to relaunch its strategy established in the “Global Europe” document, aimed at first at Peru and Colombia in response to the rejection of countries like Bolivia, Venezuela, and Brazil from MERCOSUR.

These negotiations in which Europe is reproducing the format of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in “disguise” have caused serious conflicts in the framework of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) and in Central America.

In Paraguay, Laiglesia talked about increasing cooperation with this country. In Uruguay he was interviewed by a local radio station and stated that the experience gathered in the negotiation with CAN will be useful for this new stage with MERCOSUR. The bloc made up by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay opposed the inclusion of texts related to public procurement and intellectual property in the Association Agreements. Laiglesia said that “the first thing to take into account is to see if there is the political will to drive this negotiation and see what we can add, modify formats or contents, or take advantage of the experiences gathered in the negotiations of the EU with other regions, especially with the Andean Community”.

The European Union has promoted free trade agreements in its negotiations with Latin American countries since 2007, as tools for economic growth, as well as to fight against poverty, protect the environment and democratic institutions.

However, almost two years after the beginning of the negotiations, the evidence clearly points out that on the one side, the main beneficiaries of this free trade agreements will be the big European transnational corporations operating in the energy, public services industries and agroindustry, chemical, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as well as the increasingly powerful industries of cellulose and paper.

And on the other side, peasants, the environment, food safety and biodiversity are the parties most affected, contrary to what the official documents coming from Brussels state.

It is to expect that with the Spanish presidency of the European bloc the negotiations will be intensified, supported by the need of the European corporations to expand in the Latin American markets and natural resources.