Trade ministers will approve a controversial free-trade agreement with Colombia and Peru when they meet in Brussels next Friday (16 March), setting the scene for a major confrontation with the European Parliament. MEPs are concerned about the state of labour rights in Colombia, and trade unions have called on them to reject the deal.

Next week’s decision by the member states will allow Karel De Gucht, the European commissioner for trade, to sign the agreement, which then requires the Parliament’s consent. Mário David, a Portuguese centre-left MEP, will draft the Parliament’s opinion and a vote in the international trade committee is tentatively scheduled for 20 June, with a plenary vote scheduled for 10 September.

De Gucht told MEPs on the international trade committee on 29 February: “For Colombia and Peru, this agreement will ease their progress to broad economic prosperity and provide a buttress to their political and social stability.” According to the European Commission, EU-based exporters will save at least €250 million in tariffs every year. Colombia and Peru will save more than €150m every year in tariffs on farm exports, the Commission said.

Customs duties

The agreement will eliminate all EU customs duties for industrial and fisheries products from Colombia and Peru on the day it takes effect, while the two countries have a ten-year transition period before scrapping their tariffs on EU exports. In 2010, the EU exported goods worth €7.9 billion to the Andean Community and imported goods worth €12.2bn from the region.

On 22 February, trade union federations called on MEPs to reject the agreements with Colombia and Peru. “As a result of continuing violence in Colombia and violation of human and labour rights, and the weakening of the Andean Community through individual EU trade agreements rather than bloc-to-bloc relations, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA) call for legislators to oppose the EU-Colombia/Peru free-trade agreement,” the letter said.

The difficulties encountered in the US Congress by a US-Colombia trade deal signed in November 2006 might give a taste of what lies ahead in the Parliament. Congress approved the deal only last October, after Colombia and the US concluded a Labour Action Plan to ensure protection of labour rights in Colombia.

The ratification prompted complaints by the biggest trade union federation in the US, AFL-CIO, that the deal would unleash a “new wave of anti-trade union violence” in Colombia. It said that four trade unionists had been killed in January alone. Similar fears have been voiced by labour-rights activists in the EU.

“Despite the negotiation of the US-Colombia Labour Action Plan, the reality on the ground for Colombian workers remains completely unacceptable,” wrote the trade union federations last month. “Union leaders and labour activists continue to be assassinated, threatened, and intimidated, and the perpetrators enjoy almost complete impunity.”

Generalised System of Preferences

The European Parliament’s international trade committee on 2 March approved a proposal by the European Commission to revise the number of beneficiaries of the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) and to focus the programme on the poorest countries. The Commission proposal would reduce the number of countries in the GSP from 176 to around 80, eliminating benefits for Brazil, Russia and Saudi Arabia, among others.

MEPs lowered the threshold that allows the Commission to scrap preferences on textile imports, in a bid to protect the EU’s textile industry. MEPs have begun informal talks with the member states and the Commission with the aim of reaching a first-reading agreement on the proposed revision, which would take effect from 1 January 2014 at the latest.

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