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The head of the German government, Olaf Scholz, met on Saturday in Buenos Aires with the Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, and they affirmed the importance of concluding the agreement between the European Union and Mercosur.
“We agree to deepen bilateral trade relations and for this the European Union’s agreement with Mercosur is of special importance. Our goal is to reach a quick conclusion” to the negotiations, Scholz told reporters after the meeting.
Fernández, in turn, conveyed to Scholz his previous conversations with the Brazilian president, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, and the intention of the two South American countries that “once and for all, we can finalize” the EU-Mercosur agreement. After Lula’s return to power in Brazil “we are in better conditions” to reach an agreement, Fernández said.
Scholz’s tour will also take him to Chile and Brazil and make him the first leader of Western powers to meet Lula since he took office on Jan. 1. Germany, Argentina’s main trading partner in the European Union with an exchange of 3.6 billion dollars in 2022, has been interested in the development and export of renewable energy, reported the Argentine Foreign Ministry.
After the meeting, the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding on the clean energy transition and a letter of intent to strengthen cooperation in the area of startups and the knowledge economy. The next stop will be Chile, where he will visit with President Gabriel Boric the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, which commemorates the atrocities committed during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).
The visit to Brazil on Monday will be closely watched after relations became fragile during the administration of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022). The last visit by a German head of government to Brazil took place in 2015, when then-chancellor Angela Merkel met Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in Brasilia.
– EU-Mercosur Agreement –
The trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) is one of the main topics on the tour’s agenda. That agreement was sealed in 2019 after 20 years of negotiations, but it has not yet been ratified and is the subject of strong criticism in European countries. The agricultural sectors and the ecological movements of the EU question in particular the origin of products resulting from the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, which Lula has proposed to reverse since his return to power at the beginning of the month.
This week, Lula declared in Uruguay that he considers the conclusion of this agreement between blocs “urgent”. This urgency finds an echo in the industrial sectors of Germany, which see a promising market in the continent in the South American countries, threatened by the growing presence of China.
The powerful German federation of machine tool manufacturers called before Scholz’s departure for the agreement “to finally apply after years without getting anywhere.” “Time is short,” he insisted. German companies are looking for business opportunities after the turmoil in raw material supplies caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Fernández told Scholz that “Argentina wants to become a safe supplier of gas to the world, also lithium and green hydrogen.”
– Environmental Protection –
Environmental protection will be another key issue on the chancellor’s tour, especially in Brazil. Following Lula’s electoral victory on October 30, Germany announced that it will resume its contributions to the Amazon Forest Conservation Fund frozen during Bolsonaro’s presidency, with a first payment of 35 million euros.
“The Bolsonaro government promoted a break in Brazilian environmental policy, closed the doors of environmental diplomacy,” Roberto Goulart Menezes, from the Institute of International Relations at the University of Brasilia, told AFP. “Lula’s government, on the contrary, is taking up this agenda and placing it among its priorities,” he added.
– Pressure for Ukraine –
Scholz addressed the issue of the war in Ukraine in Buenos Aires. German government sources had announced that the chancellor wanted South American countries to lean in favor of kyiv. After expressing his “concern” about the Russian occupation and calling for an “end of hostilities”, Fernández added that “Russia must understand the damage it causes the world” with the invasion, which both Argentina, Brazil and Chile have condemned although they have been reluctant to impose sanctions on Moscow.
Fernández said he hoped “peace will recover as soon as possible,” while he assured that neither Argentina nor anyone in Latin America “is thinking of sending weapons” to Ukraine. Lula caused a stir last year when he claimed that Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky was “as responsible as [el presidente ruso, Vladimir] Putin” in that conflict.
