The Brazilian president is in charge of the bloc’s pro tempore presidency and has finished outlining a plan to “balance” the agreement with the new environmental requirements of the EU. Negotiations continue and the foreign ministers of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay met in Brussels with the Executive Vice President of the group of European countries.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, who is in charge of the pro tempore presidency of the mercosurarrived this Monday in the Belgian capital with a proposal to “balance” the agreement with the European Union. The new presentation is given in response to the document on environmental requirements that Brussels released in February of this year and that could harm local exports. As Ámbito learned, the American bloc It will ask for more financing for the energy transition, for small and medium-sized companies and a process of bi-regional integration of value chains.
Last Friday, the Brazilian Foreign Minister, Mauro Vieira, handed over the drafts to his Argentine counterpart Santiago Cafiero, who is also in the old continent to participate in the summit between the EU and CELAC. In principle, the proposal that Lula is holding contains part of the work that had been carried out during the pro tempore presidency of Alberto Fernández and has the endorsement of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
In the first six months of the year, the Argentine Foreign Ministry prepared two “side letters” that aim to “balance” the conditions of the agreement with the new requests from the European Union in environmental matters. On this point, what the American bloc is looking for is financing from the European Investment Bank (EIB) mainly focused on small and medium-sized companies and the energy transition.
After the pandemic and also due to the consequences of the war between Russia and Ukraine, many companies decided to relocate their production to have “safe suppliers”. Mercosur’s intention is to attract part of these investments in sectors such as: industry, food, mining and energy and form “bi-regional value chains”. This is another of the demands that the bloc has been promoting.
The Mercosur foreign ministers took the opportunity to meet with the Executive Vice President and Trade Commissioner of the European Union, Valdis Dombrovskis. With a concrete proposal in hand, the ball is now in the field of european bloc that, despite wanting to be “open to Latin America”, it still has very strong resistance from France and its protectionist tradition on agricultural production.
“I am pleased that Europe looks at the Caribbean and Latin America with an inclusive vocation, the act of association supposes the existence of parts that understand each other for a balanced development. An association demands that both parties benefit from the agreement, when only one benefits, that ceases to be an agreement and looks more like a mockery,” Fernández said Monday in Brussels.
The agenda of the Argentine entourage is broader. as anticipated Ambit in October of last year, the Argentine president signed this Monday a energy cooperation memorandum in which both parties join forces to promote renewable energies, the deployment of hydrogen as an energy source, the reduction of methane emissions and the development of a “socially just” ecological transition. Along the same lines, the pact includes the need to guarantee “future investments in promising projects or activities”.
Source: Ambito
