MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mercosur and EU will be ready to exchange trade proposals ‘in June 2012’

Uruguayan Foreign Affairs minister Almagro made the announcement

Mercosur and the European Union are committed to presenting their proposals with list of products for a free trade agreement in June 2012, announced on Friday Uruguay’s Foreign Affaire minister Luis Almagro.

“The elaboration of the proposals both in Mercosur and the EU are rather conditioned to electoral calendars and this is what has made work in the different commissions to be somehow slower”, said Almagro at a press conference in Montevideo on returning with President Jose Mujica from a ten-day tour of European countries and EU headquarters in Brussels.

“The chronogram which we have been considering is to keep advancing in the next November meeting in Montevideo, in the main areas but also in such issues as rules and regulations, cooperation and shaping out the characteristics of the respective proposals”, said the Uruguayan minister.

This will be followed next June 2012 with a meeting in Santiago de Chile, “which we expect will be when both sides can come up with the proposals, hopefully viable and acceptable”

EU/Mercosur association talks including a trade accord took off again in May 2010 after having been frozen for six years, but have lately seen the original impulse slow down mostly given elections in Argentina and France, both major players in the negotiations.

Furthermore European farmers unions have estimated that a trade agreement with more efficient Mercosur could cost EU agriculture over 25 billion Euros. However an EC paper put the figure at 3 billion Euros.

The EU group is split on how to address the agriculture issue and the sole mention of sectors been overwhelmed by Mercosur (beef and poultry for example) plus the potential loss of rural jobs trigger immediate reactions.

The next round of EU/Mercosur negotiation is scheduled to take place November 7 to 11 in Montevideo since Uruguay currently holds the pro tempore rotating chair of the South American block.