Mercosur meets for the first time since 2019 with all its presidents to discuss the agreement with the EU

July 3 () –

Mercosur will meet this Monday in Puerto Iguazú (Argentina) with the presence of all the presidents of the organization’s member countries for the first time since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“(Argentine Foreign Minister) Santiago Cafiero opens the 62nd Mercosur Meeting with the presence, for the first time since 2019, of all the presidents. Tomorrow the minister will lead the summit of ministers together with his peers from the four States Parties and from Bolivia”, has published the Argentine Foreign Ministry on its Twitter account.

The meeting, which the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, has not attended due to a suspension of his participation since 2017, will aim to discuss the free trade agreement with the European Union, as reported by the newspaper ‘Página 12’.

Since 1999, the EU has been negotiating a trade agreement with the Mercosur countries, which include Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Although an agreement in principle was reached in 2019, during Lula’s term, it was not achieved due to the protectionism of the agricultural sectors in France and the Brazilian and Argentine governments, which sought to preserve their industries.

In this sense, the president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, assured at the end of June that the demands of the European Union for a free trade agreement with Mercosur are a “threat” and criticized the scant emphasis that the international community is placing on fight inequality.

Among the terms criticized by Lula is the one that allows European and Brazilian companies to receive the same treatment by the Federal Government, or the one that sanctions South American countries that fail to comply with the 2015 Paris Agreement, regarding the commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In turn, they have not liked, in reference to a law approved by the European Council in May of this year, the ban on importing products from deforested areas after 2020, under penalty of fines.

For its part, the Government of Argentina announced in June that it would present a proposal to include safeguards that prevent or contain the adverse effects on Argentine exports of the “unilateral” measures adopted by the community bloc for alleged environmental purposes.