Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (Crossbench). It was answered on Monday, 18 January 2010.

EU: Free Trade Agreements

Question: My Lords, that is extremely welcome news, but given the noble Lord’s wide experience of these matters in Brussels in his previous occupation, can he say when he thinks that these agreements will be concluded? Obviously the sooner they are, the sooner that benefits will start to accrue in connection with investment and job creation.

Answer: My Lords, my personal experience extends to the fact that I originally obtained the mandate and launched the negotiations for this free trade agreement. I am afraid that these agreements always take longer than was originally hoped. The central problem in this negotiation is that originally it was conducted on a region-to-region basis with all four members of the Andean community. However, Bolivia and Ecuador subsequently decided to come out of the negotiations. I hope that they can now make definitive progress. The next round starts in Lima either today or tomorrow, almost as we speak, and the European Union hopes to complete the full negotiation in the first half of this year.

Secondary information