Next Thursday, Central America and Europe will resume their unfinished negotiations for an Association Agreement between them.
Talks will last for two days, with negotiators trying to solve the differences both blocks have regarding how much tariffs to remove and how to do it on several sensible products.
Rubén Morales, Guatemalan Economy Minister, explained that pending topics include “dairy products, alcoholic beverages, sugar, banana, and tuna, as well as rules of origin and intellectual property”.
Negotiators from both blocks announced they have reached an agreement on all items related to Telecommunications.
The announcement was made by Rubén Morales, Guatemalan Economy Minister. He added that this chapter introduces safeguards for companies to participate in the Central American telecom market.
“Morales reported two other advances in market access: rules of origin for Guatemalan coffee and vegetables”, reported Prensalibre.com.
Next week in Costa Rica, the countries of the region will define their negotiation strategy with the European Union.
The meeting will take place at the Central American Integration Secretary, known in Spanish as Sieca.
"Ministers will define if the region continues negotiations without Honduras. Once its political crisis is resolved, the country could rejoin the process", informed Rubén Morales, Guatemalan Minster, in a Laprensahn.com article.
The negotiations ended with important progress, although key issues such as banana continue to be stuck.
La Tribuna reports on its website: "In general there has been progress in the negotiations. However, a lot is being negotiated. There is progress, however, negotiations on issues such as banana have not been completed," the Guatemalan vice minister of Foreign Trade, Ruben Morales, at a press conference held at the end of five days of negotiations."
This week in Guatemala negotiators from Central America will define the new proposal that they will present at the next round of negotiations in Brussels.
Elconomista.es reports "that the Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Alfredo Trinidad, commented that of the three pillars of the negotiations: commercial, political and cooperation, they hope to make the most progress with the second.
The technical teams will meet in Guatemala next week to come up with a consensus for the proposal that they will take to the sixth round of negotiations.
The main negotiators and the technical teams will meet from November 24 to 28 to try to establish their main positions for the sixth round of negotiations, which will be held in Brussels, Belgium, from December 8 to 12.
Central American businessmen say that "there are still strategic interests in the region that have not been dealt with by European negotiators."
On day four of the XIV Central America planning session for the Association Agreement with Europe, Julio Aguilar, negotiator for the International Commercial Negotiations Business Center (Cencit), said that while Central America continues to broaden its offer to their European counterparts, not at more that 80% of the products on the tariff list, Europe has still not guaranteed the whether all the benefits derived from the General Preference System Plus (SGP Plus) will be maintained.
The teams are fine-tuning a regional strategy to pressure the EU to begin discussions on sensitive topics such as sugar, banana, and fruits.
Preparatory round 14 for the Association Agreement (AA) with the European Union (EU) began in Guatemala, with almost 100 negotiators in attendance to discuss market access, origin rules, technical obstacles to trade and intellectual property, among others.
Central America will preparing a "commercial offense" next week, prior to the fifth round of negotiations with the European Union.
The meeting that will be held next week in Guatemala will seek to improve its bid and prevent the Agreement of Association from stalling.
The negotiating teams will present a report of the last meeting with Europe and will evaluate the changes to the region's main offer, said Ruben Morales, Vice-Minister of the Economy of Guatemala.
The Central American negotiating team, which met in El Salvador this week, repeated that it will not change its position at least until Europe changes its offer.
Rubén Morales, Vice-minister of the Economy for Guatemala, didn't discount the possibility that the pot would be sweetened on both sides of the table, but he said Central America will not make more concessions until Europe does the same.