Comments on the Proposed Methodology: "EC Sustainability Impact Assessment of the trade aspects of the EU-MERCOSUR Association Agreement - Draft Inception Report"

Institutional authors:
Centro Latino Americano de Ecología Social (CLAES)
Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN)
WWF - The Conservation Organization
Instituto de Derecho y Economía Ambiental (IDEA)

The European Commission has committed itself to conducting sustainability impact assessments (SIAs) for the negotiations of all of its major bilateral and multilateral trade agreements. It has embarked on an ambitious programme of SIAs. WWF, FARN, CLAES and IDEA welcome this commitment and encourage the Commission to step up its efforts to make EU trade policy more sustainable.

The EU and MERCOSUR are currently negotiating an Association Agreement which will influence trade between the two blocs. The SIA for this agreement was launched in 2002 and is divided into two distinct phases. The first phase is a "Global Preliminary SIA" to identify the areas where there are potential for impacts on economic, social and environmental sustainability. The second phase will involve a more detailed assessment of these sectors and areas. The inception report outlining how the Global Preliminary SIA will be conducted was published in February 2003.

This document focuses on the methodological approach proposed in this inception report. It has been prepared by CLAES (Uruguay), FARN (Argentina), WWF European Policy Office (Belgium), WWF Brazil (Brazil) and IDEA (Paraguay).

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