Latin America, EU Growing Trade Ties Drive Fast Track

      The business links rapidly developing between the European Union and Latin America are “the deeper motivation” for the Clinton administration’s desire to have fast-track negotiating authority, Bernard Landry, the vice prime minister of Quebec and the Canadian province’s minister of economics and finance, told GlobalFax last week.

      Mr. Landry was in Atlanta to visit local companies and meet with Gov. Zell Miller, who visited Quebec during the summer.

      “If we don’t go fast others will,” he said, concerning the administration’s push to have legislation permitting only an up or down vote in Congress on trade agreements.

      While a fervent supporter of expanding Nafta, Mr. Landry pointed often to the EU’s gradualist approach to unification.

      On the labor and environmental issues, he said that policies set by Nafta agencies located in Montreal and Dallas should be studied as models for elsewhere in the region. The Montreal-based agency follows environmental issues, while that in Dallas follow labor issues.