MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

The Mercosur dream has “over ambitious targets and little pragmatism”

Veteran Uruguayan economist and diplomat Enrique Iglesias frustrated at the limited advance of regional integration in fifty years

In the sixties we had a “very strong dream about the idea of Mercosur” but it is “frustrating to see how little has been advanced in fifty years” said economist Enrique Iglesias during a conference in Montevideo on the impacts and challenges of the current international economic crisis.

Iglesias who has had a long distinguished career in Uruguay and in regional diplomatic and development affairs said that some of those targets have proved to be “over ambitious”.

“It is hard to understand how this region which somehow has been a pioneer in cooperation affairs, in moments of transition and crisis, doesn’t have some form of intelligent regional cooperation”, said the former Uruguayan Foreign Affairs minister and former president for 16 years of the Inter-American Development Bank.

“I believe we are trying to refine very ambitious objectives which in practice are difficult to achieve”, added Iglesias who currently is the chairman of the Ibero-American cooperation office seated in Madrid.

“I’m not saying we have to renounce those objectives, but that we must certainly be involved in a healthy pragmatic approach regarding regional integration”.

He said it was disappointing that the regional integration process, which took off in the sixties with ALALC, later with ALADI and in the nineties with Mercosur, has not been able to materialize expectations.

Speaking more specifically of the Southern Cone (of South America) Iglesias said Mercosur has not been Uruguay’s main insertion experience and not necessarily the most successful, but “it is most important for the country” given the vigorous trade with Argentina and Brazil. The fourth full member of Mercosur is landlocked Paraguay.

Mercosur is signalling “a clear historic reality” as well as geographic, economic and social, which can’t and must not be ignored.

“We must continue with this insertion experience, although this does not mean we must give up other forms or opportunities of international insertion”, underlined Iglesias.

However the region must define “less ambitious objectives” and more specifically oriented to the promotion of trade, investment and infrastructure”.

Uruguay has tried other forms of international insertion, more precisely with a free trade understanding with the United States, but senior Mercosur members, Argentina and Brazil have systematically blocked those attempts.