MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine President in favor of fair and equitable trade

Fernández also told German Chancellor Scholz about the need to update the EU-Mercosur deal

Argentine President Alberto Fernández Monday said at the European Council headquarters before the plenum of the EU-Celac Summit in Brussels that “Our regions must promote fair and equitable trade based on mutual respect.” He also underlined the importance of working together. It is the first meeting between the two blocs since 2015.

“It cannot be that we do not turn this meeting into a starting point for an agreement between the European Union and Latin America. I believe it is possible, especially when I see that [Argentine writer] Jorge Luis Borges inspires Europeans so many times,” Fernández said.

“Although today's world is different, our will to walk a common path to face together the new challenges that oppose us seems to remain unchanged,” he added.

Fernández, who was pro tempore president of Celac in 2022, also pointed out that Argentina worked “seeking to lead Celac towards its institutional strengthening as a common project of genuine expression of the interests of our continent”, and also as a platform to “deepen the relationship both with our extra-regional partners and with different spaces and organizations of regional integration”.

Regarding the relationship between Latin America and the Caribbean and the European Union, Fernández pointed out that “it must be based on trust, dialogue, and mutual cooperation.”

“Our interaction must take into account the asymmetries and imbalances existing between our regions as a starting point,” he insisted.

“Latin America and the Caribbean is a region marked by deep socioeconomic gaps, where millions of people face poverty and lack of access to basic services” and that, “like the rest of the world, we have faced a chain crisis that has had pernicious effects on our societies, resulting in an increase in energy and food insecurity and a worsening of the main social indicators,” Fernández also noted.

“Working together we can present an alternative to the challenges that the global world is proposing to us,” he went on. “This is the path to follow to build a more prosperous and inclusive future for our regions”.

Fernández also held a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, with whom he reviewed the relationship between both countries and Argentina's role regarding energy transition. The Argentine President stressed the importance of expanding and diversifying trade between the two countries, providing it with greater added value, since the two economies have a high degree of complementarity, especially in the agribusiness, manufacturing, infrastructure, energy, and hydrocarbons sectors.

The President highlighted the progress in terms of joint work in energy and highlighted the signing of the Joint Declaration of Intent on Strengthening Cooperation in the Transition to Clean Energy that both presidents signed in January of this year on the occasion of Scholz's visit to Buenos Aires. Germany is Argentina's main trading partner in the European Union and the ninth-largest foreign investor in the country. German investment is present in key sectors such as infrastructure, energy, manufacturing, and crude oil and natural gas extraction.

Regarding Mercosur's agreement with the European Union, the Argentine President stressed the need to update it, so that both economies benefit from it since both regions have asymmetries both in economic and human development aspects. Fernández also suggested Argentina and Germany deepened a joint agenda on value chains to promote the localization of productive investments, technological development, and the promotion of employment.