» Declaration of the Third Summit of the Americas - Quebec City, Canada, April 20-22, 2001
» Plan of Action of the Third Summit of the Americas - Quebec City, Canada, April 20-22, 2001

Up to now five ministerial meetings on the FTAA have been held. The first took place in 1995 in Denver, the United States, and the second was held in 1996 in Cartagena, Colombia. In 1997 Brazil organized the third ministerial meeting in Belo Horizonte. In March 1998 the fourth meeting was held in San José, Costa Rica, which marked the close of the preparatory phase and the effective initiation of negotiations. The Committee on Trade Negotiations (CTN) was created and met for the first time in Buenos Aires in 1998. During the Second Summit of the Americas, which met in April 1998 in Santiago Chile, the Heads of States and Governments of those countries negotiating the FTAA evaluated the stage of trade negotiations and other topics of interests to the hemisphere. The Summit reiterated that the FTAA negotiations should be concluded by the year 2005. It was also agreed that the ministers would approve measures to facilitate negotiations by the year 2000.

At the fifth ministerial meeting of the FTAA held in November, 1999 in Toronto, Canada, eighteen measures to facilitate negotiations (eight in the area of customs procedures and ten in the area of transparency) were adopted, and guidelines for the future of negotiations until the ministerial meeting to be held in Buenos Aires in April, 2001 were established. The negotiating groups were granted the mandate until December 2000 by the ministers to prepare a first draft of their respective chapters for an FTAA agreement. The work of the negotiating groups will be compiled by the Committee on Trade Negotiations, which will prepare the first draft of an FTAA agreement - with many pending points - to be considered at the ministerial meeting in Buenos Aires in the year 2000.

The FTAA discussions progress in nine different negotiating groups - Access to Markets, Agriculture Services, Investments, Government Procurements, Solutions to Controversies, Intellectual Property Rights, Subsidies, Antidumping and Countervailing Measures, and Competition Policies - and in three non-negotiating venues: the Consultation Group on Lesser Economies, the Committee of Government Representatives on the Participation of Civil Society, and the Joint Committee of Government and Private Sector Specialists in Electronic Trade. The negotiating groups and the three non-negotiating areas report to the Committee on Trade Negotiations. Currently Brazil acts as president of the Negotiating Group on Agriculture.

With the intention of establishing a field of interaction with government bodies, employers' and employees' associations and unions as well as with society in general, in October, 1996 the National Section to Coordinate Matters relative to the FTAA (SENALCA) was created, a collegiate group which meets periodically to prepare the Brazilian positions on FTAA negotiations.

Brazil and its partners in the Southern Cone are interested in ensuring that the understandings made around the FTAA advance consensually, gradually, simultaneously and balanced, without harming the current phase of consolidation and expansion of Mercosur.