China has offered Mercosur to consider the possibility of negotiating a free trade agreement revealed Uruguay, when the South American block is going through one of its worst moments ever so distant from the integration process pledges of 1991.
Brazil raised to the maximum the common external tariff, AEC, that Mercosur charges on imported goods from out of the zone. The decree was published in Monday’s edition of the Official Gazette and includes a hundred goods.
Three former Uruguayan presidents recommended the current administration that without abandoning Mercosur, it should look at major trade blocks associations but at the same time a strong self criticism is needed because maybe the problem is not in Mercosur but in Uruguay.
The seizure of YPF by Argentina can be expected to have a positive repercussion for Uruguay since the country has an enviable legal system and keeps to the rules of the game, said the new Spanish ambassador in Montevideo, Roberto Varela.
Brazil this week escalated a growing trade fight with Argentina by increasing the bureaucratic obstacles for importing about 10 perishable products including apples, raisins, and potatoes, a senior Brazilian government official was quoted by the media.
Uruguay’s Vice-president Danilo Astori said Mercosur is going through its worst moment in history because some of its members in practical terms “are denying the most basic principles”.
Brazilian former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso said that Mercosur “needs to be reborn but with a real integration spirit among its members” leaving behind such ambitions as the mirror of the European Union.
Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro backed Argentina’s controversial decision to nationalize the country's biggest oil company YPF arguing countries’ right to recover a strategic market is “indisputable”.
The processes of concentration, foreign ownership and land degradation came to be a central concern of supranational bodies and NGOs that warn, like the United Nations Organizations for Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), of the “negative effects of these phenomena on food security, agricultural employment and the development of family farming.”
European Commission Deputy Director General for Enterprise and Industry Daniel Calleja warned on Wednesday that Europe has lost its trust in Mercosur trade block after the government announced it would expropriate 51% of YPF shares, owned by Spanish oil company Repsol.