Towards a Chile-Australia Free Trade Agreement
Update: Fourth round of negotiations
The fourth round of negotiations on the Australia-Chile FTA was held in Santiago from 31 March to 4 April 08. Both Chile and Australia worked very hard and made substantial progress towards finalising the agreement. Text on a range of chapters was agreed and some previously unresolved issues, which had been troubling the negotiation for some time, were successfully concluded, subject to Ministerial endorsement.
Some chapters involving detailed or technical negotiations proved more time consuming than others. Government procurement negotiators remained in Santiago after the main team departed to continue their discussions. There have been a series of video and telephone conversations since the round on intellectual property issues – another area where Australia was determined to achieve a comprehensive agreement in line with our domestic regulatory environment. It is now up to Ministers – that is, the Australian Trade Minister, the Hon Simon Crean MP, and his counterpart the Chilean Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alejandro Foxley, to conclude the negotiations and, we hope, begin the process of ratification.
Ministers are expected to conclude the negotiations shortly. Pending finalisation, work has begun on the legal scrub of the text – which is the process during which inconsistencies between provisions, or ambiguities or drafting anomalies are identified and rectified. This will be the first free trade agreement that Australia has concluded, assuming Ministers agree to do so, which will be official in two languages. This involves special arrangements for verification of the Spanish language version which Chile will provide.
When Ministers have agreed on the final outcome for the FTA, there will be a press announcement and information on its content will be publicly available. The team will then be available to discuss the provisions and detail as necessary.