MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mercosur-EU resume trade talks next July

Next July 4 Iberoamerican and Mercosur Foreign Affairs ministers will be meeting in Brussels with European Union Commissars, announced Saturday in Portugal Laila Rachid Cowles, Mercosur's pro tempore chair.

Ms. Rachid who is also Paraguay's Foreign Affairs minister and next July will be replaced in the Mercosur chair by the Uruguayan representative said that the Brussels meeting will work on a new calendar for the free trade agreement negotiations which have been stalled since last year.

The agreement on the date for resuming official contacts EU-Mercosur was reached in a recent meeting held in Brussels where Spain and Portugal played leading roles.

Ms. Rachid also announced that the Brussels July event will be preceded by a meeting of technical experts in Asunción June 19/20.

"We've advanced in a new road map and now we must ensure the political determination" to achieve the goals targeted emphasised the Mercosur official. Ms. Rachid is currently in Guimaraes participating in a preparatory meeting for the Salamanca Iberoamerican Summit scheduled for next October 14/15.

The Salamanca agenda will highlight the growing concept of "Iberoamerican community" and how to address educational, cultural, judicial and specifically migration affairs which have been in the headlines following Spain's decision to legalize hundreds of thousands of Latinamerican undocumented migrants.

Other issues include exchanging sovereign debt for education investment, creating a special fund to combat poverty and hunger, and making official the naming of an Iberoamerican Affairs Secretary General, a post to be occupied by Enrique Iglesias from Uruguay, currently president of the Inter American Development Bank