Uruguayan (left) and Argentinian foreign ministers Francisco Bustillo and Santiago Cafiero at the Mercosur summit in Puerto Iguazu, Argentina, July 3, 2023 (AFP/NELSON ALMEIDA)
A Mercosur summit opened in Argentina on Monday with a call for a more balanced relationship with the European Union, as it raises environmental demands ahead of signing a trade deal with the Latin American bloc.
“Argentina shares the objective of moving forward with the Mercosur-EU agreement,” said Argentinian Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero on Monday as he opened the meeting in Puerto Iguazú (northeast). After the ministers on Monday, the summit will bring together heads of state on Tuesday, in the imposing landscape of the famous Iguazú Falls.
Mercosur, an alliance between Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, reached an agreement with the EU in 2019 after more than 20 years of complex negotiations, but the pact has not been ratified, in part due to European concerns over the environmental policies of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).
“The deepening of the relationship between (the two blocs) is a necessary policy in an international context of conflict and growing uncertainty,” continued the Argentine minister.
But, he stressed, “to realize these potentialities and for the agreement to have good results for both parties, it is necessary to work and update the 2019 texts”. According to him, “as reached, (the agreement) reflects an unequal effort between asymmetric blocs and it does not respond to the current international context”.
The coming to power of new Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at the start of the year relaunched Mercosur-EU discussions, but the environmental demands of the Europeans, contained in an additional document to the agreement, greatly annoyed the southern countries -Americans and showered the hope of a quick conclusion.
According to Mr. Cafiero, the document “presents a partial vision” of sustainable development, with an “excessive” emphasis on the environmental issue and “a lack of consideration” for the economic and social situation of the Mercosur countries, major agricultural producers.
The subject should be on the agenda of the Mercosur heads of state summit on Tuesday, the first face-to-face since 2019, which will see Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez welcome his counterparts Luis Lacalle Pou (Uruguay), Mario Abdo (Paraguay) and Lula, who is to take over the rotating presidency of the Latin American bloc until the end of the year.
But it seems unlikely that the summit, which is being held near the triple border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, will allow South American countries to agree on how to meet European demands.
For his part, the head of Brazilian diplomacy, Mauro Vieira, said during the meeting on Monday that Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America, would submit “in a few days” to its Mercosur partners a draft “counter-proposal to the EU”.
Mercosur, founded in 1991, must also manage the tensions caused by internal asymmetries within the Latin American bloc itself.
Uruguay, the smallest economy in Mercosur with Paraguay, again denounced the “immobility” of the bloc.
“Without a doubt”, Uruguay will “at some point” ask itself the question of its mode of participation in the group, said its Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Bustillo. Quoted by the Uruguayan press, he considered in front of journalists a possible passage of his country from the status of member state to that of “associated state”.
The meeting should also allow a resumption of work – suspended since 2019 – for Bolivia’s membership of Mercosur, which currently represents 62% of the Latin American population and 67% of the continent’s GDP.
© 2023 AFP
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