MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Parlasur member claims Mercosur summits have become ‘display of empty rhetoric’

“Family photos” with no heart for a fair, solid integration

Mercosur summits have become a display of empty rhetoric, full of protocol and ‘family photos’ but with no full hearted willingness to achieve a solid, fair integration, claimed the head of the Paraguayan delegation before Parlasur, the Mercosur Parliament.

In anticipation of this week’s Mercosur summit when the rotating chair will pass from Paraguay to Uruguay, lawmaker Alfonso Gonzalez said he hoped that “these meetings do not repeat episodes of irrelevance in events full of protocol that virtually decide nothing and do not give the true picture of what is really happening”.

“The summits-fever has become in recent years a continuous stage of empty rhetoric, with no sensitivity in the framework of a bureaucracy determined to delay resolutions that effectively represent an obstacle and a difficulty for the purpose of a genuine integration”, said Mercosur lawmaker Alfonzo Gonzalez who heads the 18 member representation of Paraguay in the regional parliament.

Gonzalez claimed that Paraguay supports with “stoic patience” from the very foundation (1991) of Mercosur “the arrogance and arbitrary acts from the group’s senior members, that with their imperialistic attitude they impose obstacles to the development of our productive activities and the free exercise of our energy sovereignty”.

The Paraguayan lawmaker was referring to the two major hydroelectric dams which Paraguay shares with Brazil (Itaipú) and Argentina (Yaciretá) and the fact that its surplus share can only be sold to its partners (Brazil and Argentina) at values well below prices at the spot market for power.

Gonzalez also mentioned the sustained violation of Article 1 of the Asunción Treaty (Mercosur founding charter) which guarantees the free circulation of persons, goods and services, but which is constantly ignored even by junior officials from the group’s senior members, “thus impeding the unrestricted abidance of a norm enshrined as sovereign right by all sides regarding integration”.

This week presidents from Mercosur full members and associates will be meeting in Asunción, hosted by Paraguay for a round of talks and the formality of handing the group’s chair for the next six months to Uruguay.