Do as I say and not as I do: How the EU helped derail the process of integration of the Andean community of nations

So, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU’s external affairs commissioner is alone responsible for ruining Bolivia’s chances of entering trade negotiations with the EU as part of the regional bloc of Andean nations made up of Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador.

This is at least the accusation coming from Bolivia who argue that both Peru and Colombia have ignored agreements made between the presidents by all four Andean countries in Guayaquil as recently as four weeks ago. They have accepted an invitation by Benita Ferrero-Waldner to enter bilateral trade negotiations with the EU. On the table, the possibility of free trade treaties between the EU and these countries.

In addition, they argue that Benita Ferrero-Waldner prevented the Bolivian ambassador to the EU from participating in the meeting that took place this week in Brussels with the chancellors of Colombia and Peru.

It is very interesting that in a EU in which the executive negotiates foreign trade policy on behalf of the EU's 27 member countries, the priority seems to divide other blocs and enter into bilateral talks instead, against the express mandate of the EU, I might add. This undermines the process of, in this case, Andean integration and marginalises those heretics with constitutions that explicitly forbid the privatisation of basic services (water, electricity…), the deregulation of the financial services (who would want that in the current global financial climate?) and claim that natural resources are for the benefit of the people, not multinational corporations.

That Peru and Colombia have orthodox neoliberal agendas that believe in this type of free trade and are prepared to be steamrolled by a much more powerful bloc into signing an agreement that gives away their assets to international business is not in question. But we have to remember the political capital that Colombia especially, hopes to gain from this free trade agreement when, after many years of negotiations with the US to achieve this precisely, Congress has vetoed the agreement concerned about human rights abuses in a country in which the state is one of the main culprits. Does the EU concern itself with these trifles? It seems not.