A few days ago the meetings among negotiators from both regions were resumed in Honduras. And again it was made clear that the Association Agreement between Central America and the European Union focuses to go beyond trade, and includes aspects like political dialogue and cooperation for development.

One of the elements strongly questioned by the social and environmentalist organizations is the way in which the negotiation process is being held, “which is practically a secret. The agenda of the meetings, the documents and results of each negotiations are not known”, said Jose Acosta, Campaign Coordinator at CESTA Friends of the Earth El Salvador.

Acosta said that “what happens with this kind of agreements is that trade is done among big companies which can move their assets and capital through borders. This means that the said agreements are designed basically to follow the economic interests of corporations, leaving aside the environment and social issues”.

Central America is a region with high levels of social vulnerability, jobs are of a bad quality, featured by a lack of equality in terms of opportunities, and a high concentration of wealth. In fact, the aspects which are attractive for the European companies are the weak laws and labour and environmental systems of the Central American countries.

On the other side, Central America is one of the regions of the planet with most biodiversity and water. This resource will be seriously affected by the intervention of extractive companies, megaprojects and the implementation of intellectual property laws which facilitate the appropriation of genetic resources of Central American forests.

The negotiation has had some difficulties in working with labour, migration and environmental issues; something that is worrying since it threatens the natural resources of the region, and puts the economic wellbeing of the foreign companies before the lives of the peoples.

Despite the governments from both regions have secretly started the negotiations, behind the backs of the people, the social movements are promoting resistance processes through mobilization activities like marches, forums, exchange of information, denunciations, educational campaigns, festivals, songs, among others.

These processes of resistance are also joined by proposals based on culture and sovereignty of the peoples, proposals that sadly cannot find the spaces and mechanisms in order to be taken into account.