United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, in English; T-MEC, in Spanish) will be the new trade agreement that will replace NAFTA. After 13 months of negotiations, an agreement was closed on September 30, which was signed at the G-20 summit on November 30, although it will be rectified in 2019 by the U.S. House of Representatives. UU. Meanwhile, the text of the treaty is already public. The USMCA (T-MEC) contains 34 articles, of which 24 is on the Environment, 27 on Anti-Corruption, and articles 2,11,13,21,24 and 29 have points on practices and measures for Transparency and Accountability.

Environment, transparency and citizen

participation Article 24 recognizes the importance of cooperation, access to information, participation and consultation for environmental laws and policies. Environmental topics of interest relate to air (air quality and protection of the ozone layer), the sea (marine garbage and plastics, marine pollution and overfishing), forests and species conservation (biodiversity, invasive species and marine fauna, especially the preservation of whales, turtles and sharks).

Fishing The

treaty recognizes the importance of the fishing sector and the problems of overfishing. Promotes for your attention the use of measures based on scientific evidence that aim

to: a) Prevent overfishing and overcapacity;

b) Reduce incidental and non-selective fishing;

c) Promote the recovery of overexploited populations from all marine fisheries;

d) Protect the marine habitat with cooperation, prevention and mitigation of significant adverse impacts of fishing;

e) Reduce and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

For the reduction and elimination of illegal fishing, the parties undertake to reduce and eventually eliminate (with a deadline of three years from the entry into force of the treaty) all subsidies that contribute to the overfishing and overcapacity of the marine resource.

They also commit to implementing actions mentioned in the FAO IUU action plan and other specific ones such as monitoring, control and surveillance; fisheries management; maintaining open data on vessels and international cooperation for the exchange of information and good practices.

Organizations of the USMCA (T-MEC)

To meet the objectives of Article 24 on the environment, there will be the Commission on Environmental Cooperation and the Committee on the Environment. The Committee will be responsible for reviewing implementation, resolving issues of representation inquiries and reporting to the Commission on Environmental Cooperation on aspects of implementation.

To view the results of the modernization of the trade agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada, you can access the following link:

USMCA (T-MEC)