MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina's Pacific-pact bid would make it a trade partner of the UK, raising a Falklands dilemma

Argentine FM Quirno's bid to join the CPTPP, a bloc the UK belongs to, revived questions over the Falklands, since a clause could extend the pact to the islands in the future.

Argentina's request to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) has reopened a question over its sovereignty claim to the Falklands, since the United Kingdom is a full member of that agreement. If it goes ahead, it would be the first trade pact of this magnitude, since the 1982 war, in which Argentina would share partner status with London outside traditional multilateral frameworks such as the United Nations or the World Trade Organization.

Argentine Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno formalized the country's intention to join the bloc in early June. Made up of twelve economies —among them Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom— it accounts for close to 13% of world gross domestic product. The initiative is part of the trade-opening strategy of Javier Milei's government and, according to official data, Argentine exports to those markets exceeded $16 billion in 2025.

The sensitive point is legal and sovereign. When the United Kingdom joined the CPTPP in 2023, it reserved the possibility of extending the agreement's scope in the future to territories it considers under its international responsibility, and the report of the working group that assessed its accession expressly mentions the Falklands. However, international law specialists note that the treaty does not currently include the islands and that any future extension would require the agreement of all members through an exchange of diplomatic notes. Another element complicates the picture: the CPTPP does not allow unilateral reservations, which limits Argentina's ability to formally introduce its claim within the text.

The Argentine government dismissed the criticism. The Foreign Ministry said that, if the entry materializes, the country will formally object to any British attempt to extend the terms of the agreement to the islands, and Quirno called warnings about possible harm to Argentina's position “falsehoods.” The opposition, by contrast, voiced reservations: Buenos Aires provincial minister Carlos Bianco and former foreign minister Jorge Taiana warned that the arrangement could weaken the sovereignty claim, which the United Nations recognizes as a pending dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom.

The move comes amid a week of intense diplomatic activity around the issue. The General Assembly of the Organization of American States reaffirmed its support for the Argentine claim, and the country restated its position before the UN Decolonization Committee, where it demanded that the United Kingdom negotiate sovereignty. Joining the CPTPP, which will take years of negotiation, has also strained Mercosur, since Argentina is pursuing it through an individual route that the government holds up as an example of the flexibility it seeks for the bloc. The United Kingdom maintains its sovereignty over the archipelago and backs it with the 2013 referendum, in which the Islanders voted overwhelmingly to remain a British Overseas Territory.