The FTAA - From Lump of Coal to Christmas Tree?

Carl A. Cira
Director, Summit of the Americas Center

 
If the Quebec Summit accords succeed in breathing new life and momentum into the FTAA process, and if US fast-track negotiating authority is granted soon (a bigger "if," to be sure), the only Summit process element to have made steady progress will likely move ahead rapidly. Countries such as Brazil and Mexico will have to change their prior calculations and begin to negotiate in earnest as the US reassumes vigorous pressure and the leadership of the negotiations. With several recent one-on-one meetings with Latin American presidents and a major address at the OAS, the Bush administration has made a significant-and credible-effort to be seen as taking the Summit very seriously.

The trade ministers' detailed instructions at Buenos Aires lay out a tight negotiating schedule for the next 18 months before their next meeting. The agenda is plainly aimed at a major acceleration of the FTAA process. The Summit Declaration and Plan of Action will surely adopt the ministers' recommendations in full. In fact, it clearly appears that, despite the failure to advance the completion deadline to 2003 as sought by the US, Chile, and others, the detailed and specific tasks and short time periods set out could result in a completed agreement well before the current early 2005 target.

With an FTAA now an increasingly real possibility, the range of potential pre-conditions for membership in good standing seems to be expanding. The widening recognition by US policy makers of the need to deal forthrightly with labor and environmental issues has already produced relevant clauses in the Quebec Declaration and Plan of Action.

The principal new condition, the Democracy Clause, will certainly be included in some form, and the detailing of its full eventual implications carries a certain related logic. For some observers, specific adherence to all inter-American human rights norms and full acceptance of the jurisdiction and decisions of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IAHRC) and Inter-American Court of Human Rights must be minimum conditions for participation in the Summit process. Dean Claudio Grossman of American University's Washington College of Law forcefully stated that view at a pre-Summit conference at the Universit� Laval (see "Democracy Clause a Flashpoint Issue at Quebec Pre-Summit Conference," reported on April 19 in this section of AmericasNet). Grossman, a former IAHRC president, felt strongly that an explicit linkage to FTAA membership and the prospect of suspension for violation or disregard of international human rights obligations would be a positive way to gain advances in human rights. Another Laval conference participant, noted human rights authority Tom Farer of the University of Colorado, favors a similar approach that carefully defines the set of core human rights and puts the issue on the agenda of the FTAA. In his view, even if unsuccessful, the attempt is "worth the effort, if only to raise the consciousness of the extreme laissez-faire Bush administration."

Sustainable development advocates are also weighing in, this time with a novel new proposal for another FTAA pre-condition. These groups have explicitly proposed that countries be required to perform "sustainable development impact assessments" before ratification of an FTAA can proceed.

These and other proposals will be fleshed out and begin to circulate in earnest before FTAA negotiations are renewed in May 2001. An already complex negotiation effort will become even more so. The important signal for FTAA advocates: The train must finally be leaving the station, since so many new riders are trying to get on board.