What is the current status of the FTAA negotiations?
All the negotiating groups have held meetings at two to three month intervals throughout 2000. Negotiators have laid out the positions of their governments on the nine core issues. As of fall 2000, they were in the process of consolidating a proposed text. Vice ministerial level meetings on the FTAA will begin in early 2001. The next ministerial-level Summit of the Americas is planned for Quebec City, Canada on April 18-22, 2001, at which negotiators will begin constructing a final text. The agreement is to be complete and implemented by 2005.
Negotiations began in 1994 and have continued regularly for ten years. During three Ministerial meetings — in Quebec City in April 2000, Buenos Aires in April 2001, and in Quito, Ecuador in October 2002negotiators tried to work out differences in the draft texts among widespread protests. But the differences among the negotiators’ positions has widened over the years rather than narrowing. More progressive governments have been elected in countries like Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Argentina — that weren’t willing to negotiate their countries’ futures under the FTAA. At the Ministerial in Miami in November 2003, negotiators vastly scaled back the scope of the proposed FTAA because of the growing divergences. Then in Puebla, Mexico in February 2004 and Buenos Aires, Argentina in April, 2004 the negotiations faltered. The deadline for signing the deal of January 1, 2005 passed without any agreement. Negotiations are currently suspended (as of March 2004) — a huge victory f
