President Luis Lacalle Pou will travel this Monday to Argentina to participate in a new Mercosur summit.
The new meeting between the authorities of the member countries of the bloc will take place this Monday and Tuesday in Puerto Iguazuthe city of Misiones that houses the Iguazu waterfalls.
Together with Lacalle, the Argentine president will be present Alberto Fernandez and their peers Mario Abdofrom Paraguay, and the Brazilian Luiz Inacio Lula da Silvawho will receive the temporary presidency of the block of hands of Fernández.
The last Mercosur summit was held in December 2022 in Uruguay. The event did not end with a joint declaration of the bloc and there was several crossings between Lacalle Pou and Fernández, in relation to the easing of the bloc requested by the Uruguayan government.
“Uruguay needs and has the vocation to open up to the world. Of course if we go in a group it is better. Of course, if we offer a market of the 4 countries, we will have more negotiating power, that is what we are looking for. What we are not willing to do is stay still.”Lacalle said at the last meeting.
Both presidents even used soccer terms to show their different positions. “We are concerned about the unilateral ones. One of the conditions in a society is to comply with the rules. When you play football you have to respect them”said Fernández, who added that “the defender cannot catch the ball with his hands”.
“I would like to see the VAR of who has not complied with the rules in Mercosur”assured the Uruguayan president.
Few expectations in an advance of the agreement with the EU
As reported by the AFP agency, the meeting in Argentina no detailed answer will come out at new European environmental requirementswhich since being leaked in March have created a cloud of mutual mistrust and cast doubt on any completion of the deal Mercosur-EU achieved in 2019.
“We are very close to presenting our evaluations to the Mercosur partners”, said Mauricio Carvalho, Secretary of Economic and Financial Affairs of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry. It is taken for granted that there will not be enough time to reach a conclusion in Puerto Iguazú.
Lula has led the criticism of the European bloc of 27 countries for formulating a series of additional environmental requirements related to the agricultural sectormainly compliance with various commitments of the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015.
“It is not possible to have a strategic association and have an additional letter threatening a strategic partner”, said the Brazilian president during a forum in Paris devoted to financing the fight against climate change. In the audience were among others the French president, Emmanuel Macronand the head of the German government, Olaf Schölz.
(With information from AFP)
