Minister of Foreign Affairs Omar Paganini meets with his counterparts from Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia in Asunción.
The chancellors of Mercosur and Bolivia —which is not yet a full member of the regional bloc— meet in Paraguay at the first summit of the year. The minister of Foreign Affairs Omar Paganini is representing the delegation of Uruguay, to participate in the meeting that will have as one of its main axes the agreement with the European Union (EU).
From 9, in the Benigno López Palace —headquarters of the Paraguayan Foreign Ministry—, the ministers of Foreign Affairs of the countries that make up the Mercosur They meet to put on the table the agenda items that will be priorities during, at least, the first part of the year.
The plenary session has the presence of Minister Paganini, as well as the chancellors Ruben Ramirez Lezcano from Paraguay, Diana Mondino of Argentina, Mauro Vieira of Brazil and Celinda Sosa of Bolivia—whose integration as a full member of the bloc must still be ratified in the Bolivian Congress.
According to the scheduled agenda, a lunch with the host president is scheduled at 1:00 p.m. Santiago Penain in Mburuvicha Róga, the residence of the head of state; and between 2 and 2:30 p.m., Ramírez Lazcano’s official statement is scheduled, giving an account of the result of the meeting at the same headquarters located on the emblematic avenue Marshal Lopez of Assumption.
For his part, Paganini met last night with his local counterpart Ramírez Lezcano “to talk about the issues of the bilateral agenda and of Mercosur, at the beginning of the pro tempore presidency of Paraguay,” according to reports from the Foreign Ministry.
Among the highlighted topics of the meeting, those on regional infrastructure and the talks ongoing process that the bloc of South American countries maintains in order to turn the organization into “a platform towards the world for exports” were the main ones.
Key meeting for the Mercosur-EU agreement
According to what was announced by the Argentine Foreign Ministry, the Mercosur-EU agreement It will be one of the axes of the plenary session of the bloc’s foreign ministers. In that sense, advancing in internal negotiations is one of the objectives with which Mondino traveled to Paraguay, in order to provide a legal framework for the trade of goods with Europe that allows dynamizing the integration.
This also happens in a context in which Argentina has already announced that it is willing to put aside its claims regarding the environmental requirements included in the annex to the document in 2019 in order to sign the agreement once and for all—in a posture of impatience similar to that of Uruguay, although the government has not yet made public its opinion regarding abandoning the conditions proposed for the last more than four years—; and in which, therefore, from Europe they regained a certain optimism to close 25 years of negotiations.
In that sense, the Secretary of Commerce of Spain, Xiana Méndez, assured that the position of the Mercosur —or, at least, for now, Argentina— regarding the agreement with the EU is “very constructive” in order to close the last points of disagreement in the strategic association treaty.
Source: Ambito
