MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Opportunity for EU Mercosur discussions “building positively”

Amb. Prada said:“ There are a strong ”political will” to reach an agreement

Mercosur and the European Union have scheduled several facilitating meetings previous to the Lima summit next May which should help re-launch the stalled negotiations for a cooperation and association agreement.

"There's an excellent opportunity and momentum" to reactivate negotiations because since 2004, discussions "which had lost rhythm", now face a new scenario, "Mercosur's economic situation has improved for good and so has the world market for commodities", said the European Commission ambassador in Argentina, Gustavo Martin Prada. However the EC ambassador pointed out that the re-launching of negotiations are conditioned to the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting scheduled for the end of April or beginning of May, since EU-Mercosur negotiations continue linked to results of the WTO Doha Round talks. By then "we should be able to make decisions since the WTO situation should be clearer, in either way", said ambassador Martin Prada, particularly "with the way we should conduct negotiations on farm produce and industrial markets". The head of the European delegation in Buenos Aires said that in the last few months the multilateral trade negotiations in Geneva "have advanced", because of the sudden urgent feeling "that time is running out" for the round. "Or we do it now, or we would have lost many years. We're running out of time", said the ambassador in reference to the coming change of government in United States which will be holding presidential elections next November. "If WTO members are not capable of advancing in the coming months, the issue will be out of an agenda to discuss for some time". But Martin Prada also cautioned that a strong underlying "political will" from both sides is needed to advance negotiations. An advance delegation of eight members from the European Parliament is scheduled to visit Mercosur countries in early April with the purpose of consulting their regional counterparts and authorities to have an idea of the possible "association" climate. A further meeting to assess the atmosphere for the coming EU-Mercosur Lima summit will be held in Brussels on April 2/4 between the heads of the negotiating teams. The EU team is headed by Karl Falkenberg and Mercosur, by Argentina's Alfredo Chiaradía. A high profile "political dialogue" is programmed for April 24 in Buenos Aires between the Foreign Affairs ministers of Mercosur country members with the EU Commissars for Trade Peter Mandelson and Foreign Relations, Benita Ferrero. The agenda for the Lima summit, 13/17 May, formally has social cohesion and climate change as the main items, but both blocks agree that the momentum to retake negotiations on trade and association have been building up positively. Martin Prada also pointed out that Latinamerica and Mercosur particularly seem to be the "natural partners" of the EU in global affairs, since "we've shared most of the diplomatic solutions to conflicts at multilateral level in the framework of the UN". "We have identical, similar or compatible positions and this can't be said of any other world region", underlined the EC ambassador who added that "there are issues in which Latinamerica and Europe disagree with United States". However Brussels "does not see the relation with Latinamerica as a competition with Washington" and described as "normal" that some countries of the region "seek good relations with the powerful neighbor of the north and its ally and strategic partner", which he identified as Europe.