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Montevideo (AFP) – The possibility of a Free Trade Agreement between Uruguay and China is emerging as a hot topic at the Mercosur summit next week, after Montevideo announced that it will unilaterally negotiate an agreement with the Asian giant.
“We can say with satisfaction that the conclusion” of the feasibility study of a Free Trade Agreement with China “is positive,” said the president, Luis Lacalle Pou, at a press conference on Wednesday called to inform that “now they will formally begin negotiations” for an agreement with Uruguay’s main trading partner.
In this way, the president put on the table of the Mercosur summit next Thursday, in Asunción, an issue as inescapable as it is thorny, since to close the agreement with Beijing it will require that Mercosur approve it by consensus.
The flexibility of the block – which also includes Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay – to be able to negotiate agreements with third parties bilaterally and not as a group is an old aspiration of Uruguay that has generated controversy among the partners.
Brazil and Paraguay have been more open to bilateral agreements with third countries, while Argentina is in strong opposition; which can complicate Uruguayan plans.
Despite the fact that the members of the bloc must have the consent of all their counterparts to seal negotiations with third countries, Lacalle Pou believes that Uruguay has legal support to move forward.
“We are convinced that international law and the treaties signed by our country guarantee us” to be able to “establish all kinds of agreements with different nations,” he said on Wednesday.
Brazil, the absent partner
In this context, “it is not insignificant that the announcement was made a week before the summit,” International Relations expert Ignacio Bartesaghi told the AFP agency, since Uruguay will travel to Asunción “with the document to firmly propose” a long-standing wish.
For the analyst, although the conclusion of the feasibility study on a positive note “is a milestone in itself and a very positive political signal from China’s side”, some steps are still needed to start formal negotiations.
And in these will affect how Beijing reads what happens in Mercosur.
“The ideal thing would be for the block to enable Uruguay in a framework agreement”, or else that “a minimum consensus emerges, that the path be accepted at least by Brazil and Paraguay, because we already know that Argentina is not going to change its mind “, estimated Bartesaghi.
Without giving further explanations or linking it to the Uruguayan announcement, the Brazilian president announced that he will not attend the Asunción summit.
“It is one more sign that Brazil has paid little attention to international issues and mainly to Mercosur in this end of government,” Welber Barral, former Brazilian foreign trade secretary, told AFP.
He also points out that although Brazil asks for a relaxation, mainly of tariffs, “it does not defend bilateral agreements made by a single country.”
Likewise, Barral raises the question of whether the political discussion will take place “at a time that is not good” for Brazil, which is in the midst of an electoral campaign ahead of the presidential elections on October 2.
“They are going to kick him out of Mercosur”
The government of Alberto Fernández, a tenacious opponent of flexibility, has not yet made an official statement on the announcement, while the Argentine embassy in Uruguay barely indicated that Lacalle Pou’s words were “taken note of.”
For the Argentine economist and political analyst Pablo Tigani, the progress of the Uruguayan president “without the consent” of the bloc is something that “exceeds him.”
“If they don’t approve it, he’s going to have problems because they’re going to kick him out of Mercosur, it’s that simple,” he said in a conversation with AFP.
Lacalle Pou insisted on Wednesday that “the Uruguayan opening vocation does not contravene or is opposed to belonging to the bloc,” from which he has no intention of getting off.
What is certain is that the issue will be unavoidable at the Asunción summit, where the lowering of the common external tariff and the closing of the Mercosur-Singapore agreement will also be discussed.
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