Foreign policy is among the priorities of the incoming Brazilian administration of president Lula da Silva, who will be taking office next January first. Designated foreign minister, Ambassador Mauro Vieira said Brazil will have a leading role in combating climate change.
Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou landed Friday evening at Asunción to discuss a series of proposals to modernize Mercosur with his hosting colleague Mario Abdo Benítez.
Argentine Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero Tuesday met in Buenos Aires with his Uruguayan colleague Francisco Bustillo in a move to patch things up with the other three Mercosur members. Cafiero will travel to Brasilia Friday.
Argentine President Alberto Fernández Friday welcomed his Uruguayan colleague Luis Lacalle Pou over for dinner at the Olivos Residence in an attempt to restore relations between the two of them following a crash during a Mercosur Summit earlier this year.
South Korea wants to advance with trade negotiations with Mercosur. Discussions started back in 2018 and at the end of the month, a seventh-round is slated to take place.
The Mercosur trade block, now under the chair of Brazil for the next six months, will be facing one of its most significant potential disruption challenges after the virtual summit with the presidents of the four founding members openly exposing their differences, despite a limited coverage of the event.
In the aftermath of Friday's presidential clash between Alberto Fernández and Uruguay's Luis Lacalle Pou over the Mercosur's alleged lack of “flexibility,” Argentine Foreign Ministry's Cabinet Chief Guillermo Chaves said Saturday in a radio interview that the bloc's fundamental identity was to negotiate jointly on behalf of all members, but if each partner was allowed to hold deals individually, the association would lose its raison d'être.
Argentine President Alberto Fernández told his Uruguayan counterpart Luis Lacalle Pou his country did not want to be “a burden on anyone” when the latter called for signs of “flexibilization” on the part of Mercosur to allow member states to seek unilateral foreign trade agreements elsewhere without the bloc's approval.
There is no chance at the moment that France will ratify a free-trade deal between the European Union and the Mercosur group, an official at the presidential palace in Paris said on Monday.
French president, Emmanuel Macron, declared his opposition to the free trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and Mercosur. In addition, 265 civil society organizations were also mobilized against the agreement. The decision follows the defeat of Macron in the municipal elections and the strong advance of the Greens.