FTA Agreement comes into force between EFTA, Costa Rica and Panama

31.07.2014

 Free Trade Area (FTA) Agreement has been already signed between EFTA countries, Costa Rica and Panama in June, 2013. Nonetheless, it will come into force just in august this year. This will happen into three steps: on the 19^th of August the agreement will be enforced between Norway, Costa Rica and Panama, on the 29^th of August – between Lichtenstein, Switzerland, Costa Rica and Panama, and on the 5^th of September, the agreement with Central American countries will come into force for Iceland.

This agreement is covering trade in services and goods, competition rules, IPR protection, public procurement and state cooperation.

The trade volume between EFTA and Costa Rica increased by 80% for the last 4 years,

Source: http://www.efta.int/free-trade/news/efta-central-america-free-trade-agreement-set-enter-force-2941

Expert’s opinion

The number of countries concluding free trade area agreements is increasing with every year. Just a month ago such agreement came into force between China and Switzerland(http://hbcomp.ru/about/news_and_mailings/news_jurisdictions/4088/). As we can see, this type of agreement obviously opens new possibilities for participating parties not only in the sphere of trading goods and services, but also in the sphere of investment and IPR protection. Cooperation with such European countries like Lichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland will positively affect Panama and Costa Rica (they have the place to grow). It will be no surprise if soon enough another Caribbean countries will join this agreement.

Anna Shevchenko ( Lawyer, Honest & Bright)