EFTA plans free trade agreements with further countries
Published: Sunday, Mar 10th 2024, 13:31
Retour au fil d'actualité
The European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which has existed since 1960 and includes Switzerland, concluded a free trade agreement with India on Sunday, almost 16 years after negotiations began. Further agreements are currently pending.
However, the conclusion of an agreement with the South American economic bloc Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) is not yet foreseeable, as State Secretary Helene Budliger Artieda, Director of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco), told the news agency Keystone-SDA at the end of February at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.
Switzerland did reach an agreement with Mercosur in August 2019 on behalf of EFTA. However, the agreement faced environmental criticism and fears from farmers. Formal confirmation of the agreement was subsequently blocked when Jair Bolsonaro took office as president of Mercosur member Brazil.
Further ongoing negotiations
Farmers in Switzerland were also concerned, said Budliger Artieda at the time. However, Switzerland's agricultural policy would not be jeopardized by such an agreement. The State Secretary announced that negotiations would resume in March and before July of this year. The agreement should be concluded in the course of 2024.
According to Seco, EFTA is currently negotiating further free trade agreements with the Southeast Asian states of Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, among others. Negotiations have also begun with Kosovo in 2022.
Meanwhile, negotiations between EFTA and the Eurasian Customs Union, consisting of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, were suspended in 2014. This was due to the Russian annexation of Crimea. Negotiations with the North African state of Algeria had also been suspended several years earlier.
A network of agreements
Today, EFTA's network of preferential trade relations covers over 40 countries worldwide. Since 2008, EFTA has maintained agreements with Canada and Colombia. Other free trade partners include Peru, Ecuador, Chile, South Africa, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Ukraine, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The EFTA free trade agreement with Indonesia was signed in 2018. A referendum was held in Switzerland against the approval of the agreement. Opponents of the agreement expected that the small benefits for Switzerland would not outweigh the environmental damage caused by Indonesian palm oil production. However, the electorate approved the agreement on March 7, 2021, whereupon it entered into force.
The free trade agreement between the EFTA states and the Republic of Moldova was also signed in June 2023. Moldova is the first country with which EFTA has agreed a chapter on e-commerce.
©Keystone/SDA
French 
English 
German 
Spanish 
Arabic