Banca March| The European Union and Mercosur – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay – reached a free trade agreement in 2019 but it has since not been ratified owing to unresolved differences between the parties. Now the Mercosur members, who are meeting in Argentina, want to close the agreement “once and for all”, although they also warn that it will not be at any price.
On the European side, reticence persists among member countries with an important presence of the agricultural sector, such as France, to which environmental demands have been added.
On the Mercosur side, Brazil has ruled out making concessions in the chapter on government procurement in order to protect the bloc’s small and medium-sized enterprises. The next opportunity for both blocs will be the EU and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States summit in Brussels in two weeks’ time.
