The president of Paraguay, Santiago Penaassured the Financial Times that, if an agreement is not made official, the South American bloc will withdraw and begin negotiating another Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Asian nations.
“If there is anyone who can close the deal it is Lula (Da Silva). It will be this year or it will not be, it will never happen,” he said. Grief in reference to the trade agreement. In line with the lack of hope of the Paraguayan, the president Luis Lacalle Pou He admitted last August that he was “not very optimistic” about the signing of the FTA.
The leaders of the South American bloc have asked their European counterparts for speed in recent days to get the FTA negotiations back on track, but they seem to remain bogged down. “Either we close before December 6 or we don’t close,” he stated bluntly. Grief.
“25 years of negotiating does not seem logical in modern times,” he said. Lacalle Pou to the media DNews during the presidential inauguration of his own Grief last August.
Lula seeks to close an FTA with the European Union in 2023
The president of Brazil, Lula da Silvawho holds the pro tempore presidency of the South American bloc, also gave the European bloc until the end of the year to make a statement on the matter.
In 2019, both blocks had reached an agreement in principle, leaving pending the resolution of some technical issues, which had to be resolved this year, but the discussions were complicated by demands from both sides of the board.
“With the problems that exist with some European country, if we from some country in the Mercosur We also generated some slowdown, it does not help this to end quickly,” he had commented. Lacalle Pou about.
From the South American economic bloc they considered that the EU’s environmental demands are “unacceptable”, since they contain threats of sanctions.
The topic will be the central axis of the next informal meeting of European Trade Ministers to be held on October 19 and 20 in Valencia (Spain).
Source: Ambito
