MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Montevideo expected to host Mercosur two in one summits next August

Apparently President Mujica has been making the contacts to formalize the summit

Montevideo will be hosting the much delayed Mercosur (December) summit sometime next August as part of the 'normalization ' process, according to sources from the Uruguayan foreign ministry following revelations that negotiations with that purpose have been ongoing for several months now.

 Apparently since the summit will be held in Montevideo, President Jose Mujica will be acting as chair of the event when the responsibility will be passed on to Paraguay, and President Horacio Cartes, marking the full formal return of the landlocked member to the regional group, since it was suspended in June/July 2012.

According to those sources the idea is that at the August meeting the two six-month summits take place, the repeatedly suspended December summit and the following which should take place sometime next July.

The last Mercosur summit was also held in Montevideo, July 2013, when Venezuela took the chair and was supposed to organize last December's presidential meeting, but because of the ongoing political situation in Caracas, it has been suspended several times.

Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff anticipated last February in Brussels that the chair for the current six-month would be handed by Venezuela to Paraguay.

However presidential agendas could be full: there is the whole month of the World Cup in Brazil; Uruguay and Brazil are holding presidential elections next October; Argentina is in the process of reshuffling its economic policies, and Venezuela continues absorbed by its own domestic problems.

Likewise Mercosur besides complying with the formality of the summit calendar, must finish to draft its shared tariff-reduction proposal to exchange with the European Union in the framework of negotiations for an ambitious trade and cooperation agreement that was started back in 1999, and remains unfinished.

Precisely this week technical groups from the full members of the group, except for Venezuela, are scheduled to meet in Montevideo to try and elaborate the final proposal, which still also include Argentina, until recently reluctant to yield its domestic market or the possible loss of jobs.

This is the first time since the founding of Mercosur in 1991 that a summit is missed.