Chile’s new trade agreements: EU, CPTPP, EFTA, Indonesia and UAE
Chile‘s new trade agreements, currently under negotiation, including extensions, involve the European Union, CPTPP, EFTA, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Chile already has 33 Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Preferential Trade Agreements with 64 economies representing about 86.3% of the world’s GDP.
First, the European Union and Chile concluded negotiations to modernize the current EU-Chile Association Agreement on December 9, 2022.
Since 2016, Chile has been negotiating with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) to improve and modernize the current Free Trade Agreement between the two parties. Several rounds of negotiations have taken place and the parties have made significant progress with the objective of finalizing the negotiations soon. The fifth round of negotiations took place on March 27-30, 2023 in Santiago, Chile.
On the other hand, on May 26, 2014, Chile and Indonesia launched negotiations for a free trade agreement. On November 28, 2018, the Chilean Senate approved the Chile-Indonesia Comprehensive Association Agreement.
Then, on November 21, 2022, both nations signed the Additional Protocol to the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) on Trade in Services. This Additional Protocol was negotiated in less than a year and after four virtual, hybrid and face-to-face rounds, which began in November 2021 and ended on October 20, 2022.
New trade agreements
On February 25, 2022, with the aim of continuing to boost trade and economic cooperation, Chile and the UAE announced the start of negotiations for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CETA) to strengthen bilateral trade relations. The latest round of negotiations took place in May 2023 under a hybrid format, some of the meetings were held in Dubai and the rest virtually.
Finally, on October 11, 2022, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement (TIPAT) was approved by the National Congress.
Following this, the Chilean Executive formally ratified the agreement and sent the required notification to the government of New Zealand in its capacity as depositary of the agreement.
As a result, the agreement entered into force with respect to Chile on February 21, 2023.
Chile thus becomes the tenth economy to become a full member of this treaty, which is also signed by Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
In 2021, the United Kingdom formally applied to join CPTPP. After multiple meetings to assess the UK’s accession, substantive closure of the negotiations has been reached in March 2023.
