EU confirms Brazil as a strategic economic partner
The European Commission confirms Brazil as strategic economic partner in the new Trade and Investment Barriers Report 2015 about international trade, as well as Argentina, China, Russia, Japan, USA and India. The document highlights that, exactly because of this strategic condition, it is necessary to solve the concrete barriers to trade and investment opportunities of the EU companies that still exist in these countries.
The document stresses that the EU’s priority is the TTIP , Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the European Union and the United States.
This fifth edition of this report published in March, indicates that Brazil remains a strategic partner despite keeping what the EU considers four major trade barriers:
- Media and communications, aviation, transportation and mining are subject to foreign ownership limitations, according to the report.
- Discriminatory taxes and subsidisation of domestic producers in Brazil. The EU demonstrates a special concern for the reintroduction of Reintegra- Special Regime for Reintegration of Tax Amounts for Exporting Companies- and mentions that it has already submitted a complaint to the WTO against Brazil on the subject.
- Brazil has adopted measures that aggravate the distortion of the conditions for participation in public procurement, through the establishment of preferential margins for certain domestic products, points the document.
- There are many sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS) with regard to imports in Brazil of dairy products, pork and beef from the EU.
According to the report, Brazil constitutes an important alternative market further to the ban imposed by Russia on EU exports of agricultural products and foodstuffs, because Europe is not self-sufficient.
The EU has a number of tools to deal with the trade and investment barriers, among them, it prioritizes not only implement existing trade agreements but also put them into force, enforcing what has been established. These negotiations with Brazil are moving forward, but progress is still insufficient, it says.
Barriers maintained by the EU’s strategic partners in 2014:
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