LATIN AMERICA-EU: Rio Summit to Be Diverse and Divided

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Commentary Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 25 1999 (IPS) - A wide variety of processes, negotiations and demands will compete for attention during the short Latin America and Caribbean-European Union Summit this Monday and Tuesday in Brazil.

The meeting risks growing too broad, blurring the central objectives of a reunion between regions that share history and culture, but that have recently grown apart.

Negotiations between the Southern Common Market (Mercosur – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) and the European Union (EU) to create a free trade zone may monopolise attention, and prompt other Latin American groups to demand similar agreements with Europe.

Brazil’s foreign affairs minister, Luiz Felipe Lampreia, called the EU’s decision to launch negotiations on Monday with Mercosur the Rio Summit’s “most important advance.”

The host country’s diplomacy has led some to criticise the over- emphasis of the parallel meeting between EU and Mercosur leaders. One part of the summit will become greater than the whole.

The divisiveness of the summit is fueled by the fact that Latin American and the Caribbean nations are divided among several blocs as they present themselves before an integrated Europe.

The EU has arranged to discuss trade liberalisation with Mercosur separately, but it has also made much progress in its talks with Mexico, and already has privileged relations with the Caribbean under the Lome Convention.

The Andean Community and Central America are expected to propose their own agreements with EU, beyond the support Europe already provides the region to fight poverty and drug-trafficking.

Cuban president Fidel Castro, the usual star of such meetings, will be on hand to represent the island nation at the summit. Cuba has its own set of problems, such as the United States-imposed trade embargo, making it especially important to develop its relations with Europe.

The risk that various talks between sub-groups will weaken the summit was recognised by the Cuban Ambassador to Brazil, Ramon Sanchez-Parodi.

To mitigate the problem, said Sanchez-Parodi, his country will not make any specific demands and will propose a permanent forum to follow up on the summit’s resolutions.

The predominance of trade and finance issues, at the expense of political, cultural and social topics, may force this meeting between 48 heads of state to narrow its objectives.

Meetings on integration are traditionally taken over by trade issues, forcing non-governmental organisations, parliamentarians and representatives of the cultural world to fight to be heard.

“Agreements like Mercosur and the Free Trade Area of the Americas should give priority to issues of human and social development,” stated representatives of the Civil Society Forum for Latin American-European Dialogue.

The Brazilian Network for Integration of the People, organised by the Forum, complained that it is unjustifiable that such important meetings do not provide for the participation of parliamentarians and non-governmental organisations.

Film industry representatives met in Brazil this week to create an association of European and Latin American film-makers as a mechanism to confront U.S. dominance of the film industry – an issue they hope to bring to the summit.

The cultural arena should be the foundation for the integration of regions that share historical roots, according to several artists and intellectuals.

Lampreia, the Brazilian foreign minister, refers to the summit as a multi-faceted meeting of the regions, and that is not just limited to trade. Co-operation on educational issues and joint cultural activities are an important part of the meeting’s agenda, he said.

The “human dimension” is another area to be included in the summit’s debates, focussing the participation of women in all social spheres, the protection of children and the role of civil society in inter-regional relations.

But the fact that Europe just recently lifted the obstacles it had place on trade talks with Mercosur has fed the perception that these negotiations will be the Rio Summit’s primary focus and its only “concrete result.”