Spain set as a goal for the next meeting of the European Union (EU) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), achieve a “road map” in the bloc’s agreement with the mercosura position shared by Uruguaywhich urged its partners at the last regional summit this week, to close that important trade pact once and for all.
“We must at least leave the summit with a road map, with a mandate to negotiate some stages during our presidency or the next one,” Spanish Ambassador Victorio Redondo Baldrich told the French Senate. The summit on the 17th and 18th of this month between leaders of the EU and Celac is the first major event of the Spanish presidency of the European Councilbetween July and December of this year.
“If we had an agreement, that would be great, but the most important thing is that we all be aware of the importance of this agreement and that we have to move forward together,” he added before the senators.
Redondo Baldrich confirmed that Spain wants to give a “definitive impetus” to this “important” pact from the economic and commercial point of view, but “fundamental” from the “geostrategic“, and warned against leaving the matter “unresolved”.
The EU and Mercosur, which also make up Argentina, Brazil and Paraguayanare trying to finalize a free trade agreement after reaching an agreement in principle in 2019, after more than two decades of tough negotiations.
But an additional document to the agreement presented in March by the European bloc of 27 countries, with environmental requirements related to the agricultural sectorgenerated resentment within Mercosur.
This document “is unacceptable. Strategic partners do not negotiate on the basis of mistrust and the threat of sanctions,” the Brazilian president said on Tuesday, Lula da Silva, during the Mercosur summit in Iguazú. Brazil assumed the bloc’s pro tempore presidency.
During his speech, President Luis Lacalle Pou asked the Brazilian president to “be the generator of optimism” in his “already abundant pessimism around this agreement.”
“Because? Because 25 years of negotiations in the modern world is not logical, all the things that have changed in this time”, he reflected. “We know what are the things that we have in favor, we know what are the ones that we have against, let’s clear the obstacles to be able to culminate, among other things, because we need to give credibility to the particular actors so that trust is finally built,” he said.
In France, farmers put pressure on the president Emmanuel Macron so that he does not sign this agreement, like the two chambers of Parliament, fearing a massive arrival of products from Mercosur. “We understand the position of France and the concern of the farmers”, but it is necessary to adopt decisions “with a strategic perspective”, added the Spanish ambassador.
Source: Ambito
