Mercosur will present the counter-proposal to the EU in September

In September, Mercosur will present its counter-proposal to the European Union (EU) in the negotiations for the conclusion of a trade agreement. The South American bloc’s response will be presented by September 17. The information was given by deputy Pedro Lupion (PP-PR), president of the Agricultural Parliamentary Front (FPA), in a press conference after a meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mauro Vieira, this Tuesday (29).

Mercosur’s counterproposal will be the answer to a kind of side letter, with a series of new impositions and demands for the agreement to be closed, which was made by the Europeans. Negotiations between the blocs have lasted two decades.

According to the deputy, Mercosur’s counter-proposal will include targets “that are possible to meet”, in contrast to the new EU environmental requirements, which “simply make food production in Brazil unfeasible”.

Lupion also stated that the delay in presenting the Mercosur proposal is due to the change of government in Paraguay, where Santiago Peña assumed the presidency on August 15th.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) has also been critical of the new European environmental protocol, which he has already described as unacceptable and a threat to agriculture in South American countries.

Agreement

Under negotiation for more than 20 years, the free trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union is on hold due to new demands made by the European bloc. Before this obstacle, however, some countries had already opposed the ratification of the treaty, which could become the largest negotiation between blocs in the world, moving more than R$ 600 billion.

The two blocs have been negotiating a free trade agreement since 1999, but only in 2019, under the management of former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), a text was finally drawn up. The document foresees a series of negotiations involving trade facilitations between the blocs and import and export tariff reductions. However, the document did not please everyone.

For it to be ratified and finally put into practice, it is necessary that the four Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) and the 27 of the European Union approve the agreed themes. While the South American bloc has been enthusiastic about the negotiations, some European countries do not want to close the deal.

According to the survey carried out by People’s Gazette, seven European Union countries have already demonstrated against the agreement with Mercosur. They are: Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Poland. The justifications for not agreeing to the treaty range from protecting local farmers to environmental and health concerns.