Puebla is the new Cancún: Final Statement +Updates 3 & 4

Puebla is the new Cancún:
popular pressure triumphs

Social pressure throughout the continent succeeded in preventing some
governments from making the kinds of concessions that their people
reject. The Puebla TNC ends with a reaffirmation that the
contradictions that derailed the WTO in Cancún are the same as those
that are derailing the FTAA.

These differences prevented agreement on the most basic level of
commitments for all countries. Negotiators tried everything - private
meetings, procedural changes, withdrawing points that met strong
opposition - but nothing worked. The meeting ends with only vague
agreements on the least important issues, with the important exception
of investment, where there is consensus only on including transparency
rules. As a result, the TNC has not been able to give instructions to
the negotiating groups and the risk of missing deadlines that this
implies has grown.

The points of disagreement are substantial. The U.S. wants concessions
without making significant offers in return. Fundamental conflicts
remain in the areas of agriculture, market access, services,
intellectual property, competition policy, antidumping, dispute
settlement, and institutional issues. Moreover, there is no consensus
on special and differential treatment, with developing countries
insisting that the principle be concretely incorporated into each
negotiating group while the U.S. maintains that special and differential
treatment be implemented in a much less concrete manner, through
assistance and capacity building programs. In particular, the developed
countries refuse to include any explicit mention of Compensation Funds.

The U.S. and Canada insist on maintaining their agricultural subsidies
and internal support policies, and on including a "special safeguard"
mechanism in the agreement. The safeguard could also be used by
Northern countries to keep out agricultural imports that can compete on
equal footing with their local production (sugar and orange juice are
the best known examples, though there are many more). This insistence
on the part of the U.S. and Canada was confronted by the bloc of
countries that are most competitive in this area, who refuse to sign an
agreement designed only to guarantee the profits of large transnational
companies.

In the area of market access, the position of the U.S. and its allies
continues to be that in the basic level of the FTAA tariff elimination
will only apply to "substantially" all products. And Mercosur maintains
its position that tariffs must be eliminated for the entire universe of
goods. Moreover, disagreement remains on the principle of Most Favored
Nation (MFN) treatment. Mercosur maintains that each country should be
entitled to MFN treatment whether or not the country participates in the
additional plurilateral negotiations, while the Group of 14 insists on
the ability to deny MFN treatment to countries that only participate in
the first tier of negotiations.

These conflicts go to the heart of the agreement. It has been, and
will continue to be, extremely difficult to find a compromise among
these firm, contradictory positions. As long as there is no agreement
on these issues, any advance in the FTAA negotiations will be
impossible.

The Hemispheric Social Alliance will continue the fight against the
FTAA, will intensify its mobilizations, and will shadow the negotiators,
make public all that they try to keep secret. We will not rest until
our hemisphere is free of the FTAA.

Another Americas is Possible

Alianza Social Continental - Hemispheric Social Alliance

Más informaciones:
Cristina Charão (Alianza Social Continental) - En Puebla: 55 2178-3105
Rocío Magdaleno (Red Mexicana de Acción frente al Libre Comercio) - En
Puebla: 044 55 1912-1628
http://www.asc-hsa.org

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Update #3


ENLGISH
CONTINENTAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE FTAA
STATEMENT ON THE NEGOTIATIONS IN PUEBLA

"A WOLF IN SHEEP`S CLOATHING IS STILL A WOLF"


The FTAA negotiations in Puebla began with an apparent alignment of
the different negotiating positions with the United States (speaking through
the so- called Group of 5 - - United States, Canada, México, Costa Rica and
Chile) ceding to a model that everyone can sign onto to, with the obvious
exception of Cuba. This first Tier of negotiations is becoming known as an
FTAA Extra Light. The U.S. will maintain its ambitious vision of a
comprehensive FTAA, a NAFTA plus model, in the second Tier of FTAA
negotiations, which will be optional.

But has there really been a profound change? No, the only difference is in
the format. The US maintains its original agenda, only know they have
accepted that they won’t be able to reach their goals in one shot as
originally planned. They hope to leave Puebla with an agreement in
principle on the first

Tier of the FTAA. After that, it won’t be long before countries are
pressured into entering more comprehensive negotiations in the so-called
Tier 2 of the FTAA. Of course they will try to isolate the governments that
refuse to negotiate at this comprehensive level, and they will bring to bear
economic and political pressure on these countries until they agree to
participate in Tier

2.

The peoples of the Americas won’t fall for these schemes. We continue to say
NO to the FTAA, no matter whether it is Light, Extra Light or Comprehensive.
We call on our government to not commit us to the FTAA even if it is FTAA
Extra Light for the following reasons


1) They are promoting FTAA Extra Light so that the FTAA train leaves
with all the boxcars (countries and themes) firmly connected to the imperial
caboose, then later they will fill up the empty boxes with the full content
of each theme. Once governments have signed on to the FTAA, they can deepen
the negotiations once public attention wanes. In many countries these
deeper negotiations won’t even require any parliamentary approval to be
ratified. This is even more dangerous and anti-democratic, and the people
will simply not accept it.

2) In each of the options being debated here in Puebla, the basic neo-
liberal model that has generated poverty, inequality and the lack of an
authentic, just, and sustainable development in our countries remains
intact.


3) The separation of the FTAA into two tiers and the eventual
withdrawal of MERCOSUR, Venezuela and Bolivia from the Second Tier will
leave the smaller economy countries in a weaker negotiating position, and
will leave the United States and Canada without any serious opposition.

4) This trap will have gigantic consequences. Some governments are
ready to refuse entry into Tier Two, in order to exclude the US and Canada
from deep concessions that they would give to countries with similar
development levels in bilateral agreements. Nevertheless, the US probably
has the intention to use the WTO to demand Most Favoured Nation Treatment
from these countries once the FTAA is signed and ratified.

5) Moreover we affirm that even the Extra Light proposal has
unacceptable aspects.

a) The proposal does not resolve the unequal trade that subsidies
create, internal supports and the other measures equivalent to subsidies
especially related to agriculture. (This could be a point that polarizes the
contradictions and returns the negotiations to an impasse).

b) The proposal calls for market opening to be universal. They
continue to reject the possibility of excluding agricultural products, thus
abandoning the possibility of food sovereignty and food security. Farmers
and campesinos continue to be sacrificed.

c) The G5 proposal includes in the first tier rules that would limit
the capacity of nation-states to direct national development projects and to
make their own public policies (e.g., the rules on competition policy).

d) The proposal continues to make the opening of US markets to goods
conditional on commitments in the other negotiating areas.

e) The proposal continues to include services, and thus the risk that
our human rights will be subject to the rules of market and that only those
who can pay will have access to services.


We call on our governments to reject the FTAA no matter the shape
and form and not to betray the people of the Americas. We will continue to
fight to stop the FTAA.

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Update #4


Continental Campaign Against the FTAA
Hemispheric Social Alliance


Meeting Report TNC ­ FTAA
HSA Team
February 4, 2004
Puebla, Mexico


Chances improve for an Extra Light FTAA

The Extra Light FTAA has better chances of succeeding not only because the
governments of the major blocs are pushing to finish the agreement by the
original timeline, but also because they seem ready to pay the price for the
recognition that the original FTAA vision is dead and that the FTAA has been
reduced to a purely commercial agreement. This tendency is reflected in
Brazil´s ability to resist strong pressure from its own business interests,
such as the agribusiness sector, which has declared that an FTAA with these
characteristics is a dead deal. In the U.S., big business interests still
haven´t be able to change the new direction of the negotiations agreed to
Miami, which they continue to oppose. In this context, the blocs will make
every effort to reach consensus on Tier 1 in Puebla, and will begin to
discuss what Tier 2 will look like, but without entering into details on the
second Tier. The differences in evidence again today are simply
irresolvable, but every effort is being made to ignore them in order to sign
off on a minimal agreement. Countries that are anxious to sign off on
something see the Extra Light FTAA as the only viable route.

Today there really weren¹t any substantial changes to the official agenda.
The official meeting began with the co-presidents providing a summary of
yesterday¹s discussion on common rights and obligations (Tier 1), which
covered the issues of market access, agriculture, services and investment.
Afterwards, the Brazilian delegation requested that at a very minimum, there
should be a closed-circuit transmission of the meetings to all delegation
members, contesting yesterday¹s decision that country delegations be
restricted to the Chief of the delegation + 4 delegates. By the end of the
discussion, the plenary sessions were opened to all delegates, including the
civil society representatives.

The remaining Tier 1 issues (government procurement, competition policy,
intellectual property, subsidies and antidumping, dispute settlement, and
institutional issues) were presented today. In addition, there were brief
discussions on the documents presented by Mercosur and the G10 (Canada, US,
Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, the
Dominican Republic, and Chile) regarding procedures for negotiating Tier 2.
After the presentations, the co-presidents suggested a system of direct
consultations regarding Tier 1 between them and representatives of each
proposal (Mercosur, G14, Caricom, Bolivia, and Venezuela). These
self-proclaimed ³confessional² sessions are an attempt to try to reach
consensus and produce a final text. This will last through tomorrow and
probably all day, with the final goal of producing a consensus text.

Civil Society

Mercosur representatives and civil society members of the delegations
discussed Chile´s proposal on ¨Mechanisms on Civil Society Consultation.¨
Last year, Chile presented a proposal to create a permanent civil society
committee made up of four representatives, one from big business, one from
small business, one from labor and one representative from NGOs and
academia. Mercosur admitted that they do not have a proposal on civil
society, but, at the same time, they suspect that the Chilean proposal is a
simulacrum and that it would be better to use the types of consultative
mechanism that Mercosur uses. The discussion was left open and will be
taken up again in the future.
Small Scale Agriculture

One of today´s new items was the Mercosur´s idea (initiated by Brazil) of
making a proposal on small-scale and family agriculture to the negotiating
group on agriculture. They propose special and differential for developing
countries to allow for adequate policies regarding small-scale farming,
including indigenous, campesino and family farms, aiming for food security.
Mercosur discussed a short text on the issue with the Bolivian, Peruvian,
and Venezuelan delegations. Mercosur will most likely present the same text
to the TNC tomorrow for more discussion.

The Second Tier

Today ten countries (the G14 countries minus Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and
Peru ­ or ³G10²) introduced a proposal on the second Tier that was identical
to the original G5´s draft proposal on the issue, which was floated before
the TNC meeting began. It is not yet known why these four countries refused
to support this Tier 2 proposal.

Both Mercosur and the G10 presented their proposals to the TNC today. The
presentations were short and simple, with few questions and little
discussion. Nevertheless, several important differences were evident in the
two proposals:

… The G10 proposal appears to envision one set of plurilateral
negotiations among those countries interested in joining, while the Mercosur
proposal envisions the possibility of more than one plurilateral
negotiation, each containing different groups of countries.

… Mercosur proposes that the transparency and civil society participation
rules of the existing FTAA negotiating groups apply automatically to any
plurilateral negotiations, and that documents from the negotiations be
available to all FTAA countries. The G10 proposal is silent on this issue.

… Both Mercosur and the G10 would allow any FTAA country to observe the
plurilateral negotiations. But, while Mercosur would allow observers to
intervene if the plurilateral negotiations threatened to prejudice their
rights, the G10 would allow no interventions from observers.

… Both proposals would allow observers to join the plurilateral
negotiations at any time. The G10 specifies that these observers would have
to accept whatever modalities and texts were already agreed upon by the
negotiating group, while Mercosur is silent on this issue.

… Mercosur calls for plurilateral negotiations to have the same deadline
as the overall FTAA negotiations. The G10 does not specifically address
this issue, but proposes that the presidents of the overall FTAA negotiating
process ensure, upon request, that there is enough time to complete
plurilateral negotiations.


Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

On this issue, implementation of the TRIPs agreement is the only point upon
which all five proposals agree. This is the only point on IPR included in
the G14 proposal, while there are additional points on intellectual property
in each of the other proposals. In particular, the proposals of Mercosur,
Venezuela and Bolivia contain explicit references to the Doha agreements on
public health. The Mercosur and Venezuela proposals propose the
establishment of hemispheric rules on technology transfer. And, as we
mentioned yesterday, Venezuela joined Bolivia in explicitly mentioning the
need to guarantee protection for collective intellectual property,
traditional knowledge, folklore and access to genetic resources. Ecuador
and Peru supported these positions verbally, even though they both signed
onto the G14 proposal that ignores these issues. Finally, Venezuela
proposed creating a balance between the social function of intellectual
property and human rights with individual intellectual property rights.
Venezuela also proposed guarantees for diffusion and collective access to
the fruits of scientific progress.

During today´s session, there were contacts among Mercosur, Bolivia and
Venezuela in an attempt to develop a joint proposal on IPR, but this is
still a work in progress. Also, during the plenary, the U.S. made its
position on TRIPs clear, pointing out that, in its point of view, the
technological change and scientific advances had left the TRIPs agreement
behind, and that deeper ³post-TRIPs² rules were necessary. In a word,
patents and copyrights for everything.