MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

EU and Ecuador wrap up talks on sustainable investment deal, EU’s first SIFA with Latin America

The EU-Ecuador talks were launched in late 2025 as Brussels sought to expand its investment toolkit beyond Europe and Africa and deepen engagement with strategic partners

The European Union and Ecuador have concluded negotiations on a Sustainable Investment Facilitation Agreement (SIFA), in what Brussels is portraying as the bloc’s first such deal with a Latin American country, according to an EFE report on Friday.

In a Commission statement cited by EFE, the EU said the agreement is designed to make Ecuador’s business environment “more transparent and efficient,” targeting long-standing investor complaints such as regulatory uncertainty and bureaucratic hurdles. The Commission described the pact as “fundamental” to promoting EU investment in Ecuador.

Unlike traditional investment protection treaties, a SIFA is built primarily around facilitation—streamlining authorisations, improving transparency and predictability of investment-related measures, and setting up administrative “focal points” to help investors navigate procedures. EU reference material on the bloc’s first SIFA (with Angola) frames these agreements as tools to make investment easier and more sustainable by promoting transparency, simplifying processes and encouraging responsible business conduct, including sustainability provisions and state-to-state dispute avoidance and settlement mechanisms.

The EU-Ecuador talks were launched in late 2025 as Brussels sought to expand its investment toolkit beyond Europe and Africa and deepen engagement with strategic partners. At the time, EU messaging stressed Ecuador’s potential to attract more European capital if administrative frictions were reduced and legal predictability improved—an argument echoed in Ecuadorian coverage following the start of negotiations.

The agreement also builds on an existing economic backbone: Ecuador has been part of the EU’s trade framework with Andean partners since joining the EU-Colombia-Peru trade agreement in 2017, which structured market access and rules for a significant share of bilateral commerce.