The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, affirmed that he gave up going to the Mercosur Summit to be held next week in Paraguay, although he did not detail the reasons.
“I said I’m not going anymore. In politics you can go back on some things, but my decision so far is not to go to Mercosur,” Bolsonaro said in an interview with the news channel CNN Brasil.
Bolsonaro, who will seek his reelection next October, highlighted his good relationship with his Paraguayan counterpart, Mario Abdo Benítez, but stressed that, “despite his call,” he will not attend the meeting of the bloc made up of Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina. .
The meeting of Mercosur Heads of State, scheduled for July 21 in Asunción, will be the first face-to-face after two years of virtuality due to the covid-19 pandemic and in it Paraguay will transfer the rotating presidency of the organization to Uruguay.
The discussion around the reduction of the external tariff and the unilateral international negotiations have created fissures within the bloc.
In this sense, Uruguay reported the day before that it began talks with China to sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), despite the fact that Mercosur rules do not allow countries to negotiate agreements outside the bloc.
“In each Mercosur summit and in each instance that we have had, we reaffirm the Uruguayan opening vocation. This does not contravene nor is it opposed to belonging to the bloc,” emphasized the president of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, who has become the unruly voice of Mercosur.
