Speech by the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, at the Meeting of the Andean Council of Presidents  

Guayaquil, October 14, 2008

At the Tarija Summit, where we set out to “develop and deepen the Andean Community’s integration process, taking into account the visions and approaches of the Member Countries,” we expressed an unswerving political will to continue our integration on the basis of mutual respect, despite the unprecedented challenge of having to strive for the same goal through different economic visions and approaches. 

At this historic moment in time, when the system that has prevailed over the past two decades is seen to be no longer viable, we must give serious thought to the benefits of uniting our political wills and of regional trade, cultural integration, development planning, and so forth. 

We are one hundred million men and women, a huge community that should work in peace, in democracy, and united within our diversity. 

We Member Countries, with the support of the General Secretariat, have done our utmost to deepen our trade integration, advance in our negotiation of an Association Agreement with the European Union, and strengthen cooperation in the other areas of the process, with important results. 

Even so, we find ourselves today at a new crossroads.  Certain areas in which the diversity of visions and approaches of the Member Countries have been manifested have apparently become obstacles to the successful continuation of our joint negotiations with the European Union.   

This situation is threatening not only to bring to a standstill accomplishments that have cost all of us large amounts of resources and a great deal of sacrifice over decades, but, worse still, jeopardizes the very existence of the integration process and the possibility of continuing to remain united.   

We must be frank about this matter: the integration process is not at its best right now.  Of the four Member Countries, two have broken off diplomatic relations with each other.  In addition, two countries have already completed free trade agreements with the United States in legitimate exercise of their sovereignty, while the other two are opposed to this free trade vision of world trade.   Two countries have already asked the EU to consider allowing them to pursue their negotiations on a bilateral basis and the response from the EU, at least for the Pro Tempore Chair, is worrying, to say the least.  These are facts, not conjectures.  The questions to be answered, then, both at the level of this process with the EU and regarding the future of the CAN, are:  Can we continue to remain united? Should we continue to remain united?  And I believe the answer is a resounding YES, for this depends basically not on technical matters or political visions, but on our will to pursue our integration.   

The Special Summit Meeting that brings us together today offers a historic opportunity to find lasting solutions so that the integration process may resume its dynamic growth, but on new bases that emphasize those things that unite us, that which we can do better together, than separately. 

We seek our nations’ comprehensive welfare through different development models and visions, adopted with sovereignty, but we can rapidly identify, taking a pragmatic and flexible approach, a series of common interests in strategic areas that promote and improve capacities and opportunities for integral development. 

In order to define actions that will permit the accomplishment of these common interests, we must accept the following premises as a sine qua non: first, the creation and preservation of spaces for formulating and implementing national policies; and second, the full exercise, by Community bodies, of their functions and jurisdictional capacities within the framework of the strategic areas identified. 

As a concrete corollary to the foregoing, it is essential to make commitments assumed in areas of trade integration where differences exist more flexible, as well as to deepen spheres that facilitate trade in areas where important advances are being made.   

Action in the short term

In recent months, our representatives, particularly in the Andean Commission, have found it impossible to agree on a common tariff policy, on liberalizing financial services at the Subregional level and on intellectual property.  In the latter case, the latest vote taken with regard to the amendment of Decision 486 revealed the extent of our differences and the difficulty of continuing to address these matters in the usual way.

As Ecuador stated on assuming the CAN’s Pro Tempore Chairmanship, it is essential for us to focus our efforts on recovering the Andean Community as an “area of coexistence for development” versatile enough to reflect the varying interests of the Member Countries, while at the same time giving priority to action that the CAN’s present institutions and the political and economic conditions of its Members can make effectively viable. 

With this aim in mind, this Council should issue an instruction --to be put into practice later through the approval of a Commission Decision-- for the conduct of an appropriate study, free from the pressures of the present situation, to strengthen Andean integration in the cited areas --in other words, tariff policy, financial services and property rights, basically intellectual property rights. 

Another Presidential instruction is needed to outline the relationship between the Andean countries and other countries, particularly the European Union, with which the Community negotiation of an Association Agreement is at a standstill, its resumption being imperative. 

Ecuador, as Chairman Pro Tempore, has done its utmost to keep this process a “bloc-to-bloc” negotiation, despite the stipulations of Decision 598.   

It is essential, if this initiative is to have any possibility of success, for us to commit ourselves to respect the different positions of each of our governments and to not oppose the measures demanded of them by their development models, as already agreed in Decision 667.

No country can be allowed to have a veto right.  Instead, Member Countries must cooperate with each other in order to ensure the coordination, in these negotiations, that is needed to safeguard Andean jurisprudence, understood in its broadest sense of maintaining the balances that have been reached among our countries. 

Nor can there be a preestablished trade agreement model, as the EU President implies in the letter mentioned earlier. 

In the medium term

It is necessary to discuss the implementation and continuation of possible integration projects, in order to spur the advance of our integration process.  I would accordingly like to propose the Working Plan for October 2008 – June 2009 that has been placed in your respective folders and that contains several actions in the social, environmental, economic, trade and foreign relations areas.   

In the long term

A vision that respects the cultural diversity of the peoples, but that, at the same time, identifies a community with shared values and interests, must be constructed through concrete efforts in the political, economic, social and environmental spheres.  This will make it possible to strengthen an Andean consciousness or identity, grounded in the adoption of the principle of non-discrimination by reason of nationality.  

Community actions cover from the consolidation of the people’s freedom of movement and their right to establishment and residence, to the formulation of Subregional social, economic, environmental and cultural policies and strategies for promoting more equal opportunity, boosting the productivity of our citizens and enterprises, conserving our shared natural heritage and shaping a common cultural space, through the establishment of Andean Consulates and the creation of an Andean institutional structure for conserving our biodiversity.    

In this vision, integration should be seen as a tool for governance and sustainable development at the service of the shared interests of the Member Countries and their citizens, and requires the construction of Andean citizenry as the focal point for coordinating everything that unites us. 

Build Andean citizenry by creating a space for the exercise of new rights, freedoms or guarantees additional to those recognized by the States, with the recognition and protection of Human Rights in Community action as the starting point; that consolidates freedom of movement of individuals through the creation of the Andean Labor Migration Card; and that strengthens coordination for the supervision of external borders and judicial and police cooperation based on a common vision of security. 

Conservation of a shared cultural heritage through strategies for the management of ecosystems such as: high plateaus, high Andean forests and the Andean Amazon; the establishment of an institutional structure for conserving the biodiversity, and strategies and policies for the integrated management of water resources and shared hydrographic basins.   

An equitable, supportive and complementary alternative economic space that will consolidate the subregional market for goods by harmonizing customs legislation and cooperation; boost agricultural production in order to attain food sovereignty; promote industrial and handicraft production with an added value; foster responsible and sustainable Andean tourism, and achieve mutual recognition of professional degrees.    

A socially and culturally inclusive Community that will supplement national strategies and policies for fighting poverty and promoting social equity; that will contribute to the promotion of equal opportunity; that will foster a common approach to education that will revalue our history; that will boost access to medicine and the epidemiological surveillance of diseases that move across national borders; and that will make it possible to create a common cultural space in which diversity, intercultural dialogue, and access to and mobility of cultural goods and services are promoted. 

This is the challenge we have ahead of us and reason for a third Presidential instruction, entrusting the Group of Plenipotentiary Representatives for the Reform of the CAN with preparing a design for integration that will, through concrete measures, make the “unity in diversity” we have been proclaiming a reality.  

Integration requires a deliberate planning effort (notably absent from neoliberal regimes), preceded by reflection and incorporating contributions from academe and civil society regarding the direction and future projection to be given to the Andean integration project. 

For the first time in the CAN’s history, one of its fundamental bodies has met: the Consultative Council of the Indigenous Peoples.  In other words, and although it may sound paradoxical: at last, the Andean peoples have been integrated into the Andean Community. 

And at the level of consultative committees, the Afro-Latin American peoples have also been integrated into its work. 

These proposals are the result of the intensive and extensive efforts of consultative committees, made up of entrepreneurs, workers, farmers, and universities, etc.   

For that reason, the plenipotentiary representatives appointed by the Governments of the Member Countries should hold meetings periodically in order to be able to present an appropriate analysis of the Andean integration process to the next Meeting of the Andean Council of Presidents for approval.   

One of the greatest challenges to the integration process is quite possibly that of building a feeling of belonging to our Community, so that Community efforts can be backed by the acceptance of the citizens, thereby giving them legitimacy.

The concept of Andean citizenry could be the new focal point for coordinating the integration process and would be grounded in the recognition of democratic and intercultural values, respect for human rights, non-discrimination by reason of nationality, and a series of political, social, environmental, cultural and economic freedoms and rights the citizens of Andean Community Member Countries could exercise within an integrated territory. 

I have the pleasure of giving all of you a brief outline of what could be an “Andean Community for its Citizens,” consisting of the bare elements needed for meeting the challenge of having the Andean integration process permit its citizens to be firmly committed to the construction of a great vigorous and supportive integrated Nation so that we might, in harmony with nature, confront the challenges posed by globalization and move forward with an identity and strengths of our own. 

Integration will be the result not so much of complex technical formulas or long studies and deliberations, as of our POLITICAL WILL, our sovereign decision, dictated by the imperative of a common history, of common roots that uphold the brilliant possibility of a common future of wellbeing and strength. 

The time has come to summon Chile as a full Member, to its natural space, to this, its home, “from which it should never have withdrawn,” as our fellow President, Michelle Bachelet, stated so perceptively. 

Panama and Mexico should also be welcomed as observers and supportive Members; we are closely linked to all of the nations south of the Río Grande. 

Esteemed colleagues:

The current crisis of the so-called First World shows us once again that we must move ahead on our own two feet and rely basically on our own strengths.  In order to do this, the integration of our peoples and nations is an inescapable requirement. The CAN is, in the immediate and long term perspective, a natural member of UNASUR. We are all Latin Americans, we possess an enormous potential and our wealth can mean the salvation of the entire planet.  We must be prepared to assume our sovereignty over these resources and to be masters of our own destiny and, in this way, to effectively accomplish the end purpose of all our efforts, which is the happiness of our nations, of our citizens, of everyone.