The president will arrive in the Belgian capital on Monday and will participate in a summit of heads of state. He will also have bilateral meetings, among others, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Amid growing European interest in Vaca Muerta gas and lithium from the north of the country, negotiations for a trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur continue.
President Alberto Fernández will travel to Brussels next Monday to participate in the joint summit between CELAC and the European Union. The visit takes place in the midst of negotiations for the trade agreement with Mercosur which accelerated strongly this year. Lula Da Silva, who is in charge of the pro tempore presidency of the South American bloc, will also be part of the game. The Argentine president will hold a series of bilateral meetings. Among them stands out a meeting with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz. They stress that there is strong European interest in the energy and mining sectors.
At the beginning of next week, when Fernández arrives in the Belgian capital together with Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero and the Secretary for International Economic Relations, Cecilia Todesca Bocco, he will be received by the new ambassador to the European Union. The career diplomat in the commercial area of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Atilio Berardi, presented his credentials yesterday and was made official in the position.
The summit between the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) will be held in person on Monday and Tuesday. The President will take advantage of the stay to have a series of bilateral meetings with leaders. Among them, a meeting with Chancellor Scholz stands out. As Ámbito learned from diplomatic and business sources, there is a growing interest across the continent in the energy and mining sectorsparticularly lithium.
Although it is not the reason for the call, the negotiations between the European Union and Mercosur will be in the background of the meeting. It is that, together with Fernández, Lula da Silva will arrive in Brussels, who is in charge of the pro tempore presidency of the South American block and who hardened his position before the requirements of environmental clauses that could complicate local exports.
“Now Lula has the ball, we are waiting for the consolidation of the Mercosur proposal to balance the agreement”, said a senior diplomatic source to this medium. During the Argentine presidency, work had been done on the preparation of two complementary letters to balance the agreement that had as its axis the financing from the European Development Bank for the energy and environmental transition for small and medium-sized companies and the constitution of bi-regional value chains.
In this instance, the EU tries to speed up the closing of the negotiations. Weeks ago, the head of the Commission, Úrsula von der Leyen, said that her commitment is “to make the agreement come to fruition and quickly.” The Argentine government warns that the European bloc took almost four years to send its additional document on the environment. Only last February did Mercosur learn about the proposal in detail.
“Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay reacted to this document, and Brazil asked for a little more time in the framework of a change of government and a change of perspective and from that moment only four months have passed,” they said from the Foreign Ministry. Along the same lines, they explained that “the texts are being worked on.”
Announced in 2019, the agreement between the European Union and Mercosur is still on standby. Despite the fact that the EU wants to show a renewed opening towards Latin America, in the Government they consider that there are still highly protectionist attitudes, particularly noticeable in the case of the food sector that makes up a large part of the local exportable basket.
Source: Ambito
