The summit of the Mercosurin which Javier Milei he missed the game in advance. The Paraguayan president, Santiago Peñasaid in the inaugural speech on Monday that the regional body has “integration fatigue”. The bloc faces a scenario with two central issues: the stalled agreement with the European Union and the obstacles in the negotiation with China.
“We are a bit fatigued with integration and we need to renew the culture of integration.; these spaces are important,” Peña told reporters at the port of Assumptionwhere it receives some of its peers from the South American bloc: Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silvaof BrazilLuis Lacalle Pou, from Uruguayand Luis Arce, from Bolivia.
Argentinathe second largest economy in the bloc, is represented by the Chancellor Diana Mondinoafter its president decided not to attend the summit and on Sunday he appeared at a conservative forum in Santa Catarina, Brazil, where he met with the far-right Jair Bolsonaroformer Brazilian president and rival of Lula.
The Argentine foreign minister said on Saturday at a ministerial meeting that the regional bloc “he needs an adrenaline rush” and called for “new, more flexible negotiation modalities.”
Which countries are seeking negotiations with China?
“Mercosur made great progress in the 1990s, but in the 2000s, when it was believed that there would be a deeper integration (…), There was a change in the trend with an ideological bias that caused the block to disintegrate“, Peña lamented on his side.
The flexibility that allows members of the bloc Negotiate agreements with third parties without the consent of its partnersis an old claim of Uruguay, which will promote an agreement with China when he assumes the six-month presidency of the group at the end of this meeting.
The mission is difficult since Paraguay lacks relations with the Asian country because it recognises Taiwan as the Republic of China, something that Beijing does not tolerate. “We are not closed to negotiations as blocs but we are not willing to give up a negotiation of more than 66 years with the Republic of China,” Peña explained bluntly when asked if he would approve a free trade agreement with Beijing.
The paralysis of a treaty with the European Union for decades
The meeting also takes place amid the stagnation of negotiations for a free trade agreement with the European Union (EU)which has been traded for more than 20 years and which plans to eliminate most tariffs between the two zones, which would create a trade space of more than 700 million consumers.
The agreement is opposed by some European countries, mainly France, whose agricultural sector fears competition from South American agricultural products“We should have closed this negotiation last year” when “the conditions were right after so many years,” the Uruguayan foreign minister lamented on Saturday, Omar PaganiniHowever, now “the outlook for the rest of the year is far from better and was foreseeable,” he added.
He Bolivian President Luis Arce must formalize his country’s entry into the bloc after having promulgated the accession law on Friday, days after having stifled what he called an attempt to Coup d’état in La Paz.
Source: Ambito
