The CAFTA-DR-U.S. Negotiations on Financial Services: The Experience of Costa Rica
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property, (d) dispute settlement and institutional issues, and (e) labor and environment. The negotiation of the financial services chapter fell under the aegis of the negotiation group on services and investment, which, in addition to the chapter on financial services, discussed the chapters on cross-border trade in services, investment, telecommunications, temporary entry, and electronic commerce. Whereas the United States had different teams for different subjects, the core of the Central American negotiation teams was fundamentally the same for all the topics addressed.
The CAFTA-DR-U.S. Countries and Their Interests in the Financial Services Chapter CAFTA-DR-U.S. has seven signatories. However, the agreement was negotiated between two parties: the five Central American countries and the United States.26 Such a negotiation scheme required a high degree of coordination among the Central American countries. Thus, before the negotiations were launched, the Central American countries agreed among themselves not only on the parameters for organizing their joint participation in the negotiation, but also on the main substantive objectives and principles that would be pursued. Among the most important organizational rules were the following27: (a) the negotiation team would be exclusively composed of government officials and not private sector representatives; (b) the private sector would participate in the negotiations only under the side-room format;28 (c) each negotiation group would designate a Central American speaker, but such designation would not impede any country from participating in the negotiation if necessary; and (d) before each negotiating round, the Central American countries would hold a coordination meeting to agree on the specific points to be taken to the negotiation table. Later, the Central American countries agreed that Costa Rica would act as the secretariat of the negotiation process, putting the country in charge of forwarding the proposals and counterproposals to the United States and circulating among the five Central American countries any communication transmitted by the United States. For trade in financial services, the common objectives agreed on for the negotiation, at a general level, were the following (Ministerio de Comercio Exterior 2003a): • Clearly determine the scope of application of the chapter, comprising both productive investment in the financial sector and those crossborder financial services of interest to the Central American countries.