LATIN AMERICA: Germany Plans 'New Partnership' with region

BONN, Dic 31 (IPS) - Germany plans to build up a "new and comprehensive partnership" with Latin America and the Caribbean in 1995, a government spokesman said this week.

This will, however, be in concert with other member states of the European Union (EU), which will be widened to include Austria, Finland and Sweden on Jan. 1, Foreign Office spokesman Juergen Pfeifer pointed out.

The EU policy, on the other hand, is expected to be guided by the Basic Document approved by the EU Council of Ministers Oct. 31 in Luxembourg.

Germany's Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, who will transfer the six-monthly rotating EU presidency to France on New Year's Day, was instrumental in shaping the EU's policy paper on its relations with Latin America and the Caribbean.

The document pledged to help bring about a "new partnership" aimed at "increasing balanced economic exchanges" between the two regions "especially through rapid implementation of tariff reductions and the abolition of trade impediments".

Against this backdrop, Bonn is particularly satisfied that the EU foreign ministers gave their go ahead Dec. 19 to changes from Jan. 1 to the EU's preferential tariff and quota system which facilitates developing countries' access to the 15-nation EU.

"The new system is more tailored to the needs of developing nations," IPS quoted Kinkel's remarks to reporters in Brussels after the EU's decision.

Indeed, the new system excludes Newly Industrialised Countries (NICs) and extends larger benefits to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

Venezuela is added to the Latin American nations which are given a special package of preferences to help them diversify their coca production.

Current beneficiaries are Venezuela's partners in the Andean pact -- Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia -- and the Central American nations including Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Guatemala.

The expansion of the European Union Jan. 1 to include Austria, Finland and Sweden, may however affect -- as Latin American diplomats in Bonn fear -- the region's banana exports.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service