The Mercosur Council will establish an action plan at the next Mercosur presidential summit scheduled for 16/17 July in Brasilia, when the group's chair for the next six months will be handed to Paraguay by Brazil. Other issues on the agenda besides making Mercosur more flexible include addressing the 'special regimes' and the 'free trade zones' in the area, revealed Uruguay's foreign minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa.
Bolivian president Evo Morales subscribed on Friday the Mercosur incorporation protocol which makes it the sixth member of the regional group. The event took place in Brasilia during the Mercosur summit hosted by Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff.
Paraguay rejected the incorporation of Bolivia to Mercosur which took place on Friday at the summit in Brasilia and criticized the fact Uruguay accepted the group’s chair for the next six months skipping Paraguay, currently suspended from the regional organization.
Presidents from Mercosur full and associate members meeting in Brasilia rejected the coming Malvinas Islands self determination referendum and anticipated that whatever the result of the ballot “it will not alter at all the essence of the Malvinas question”.
Venezuela will adopt the Mercosur common external tariff in four annual stages which are scheduled to conclude in the first half of 2016, according to what was agreed at the summit held Friday in Brasilia and reported by Brazilian diplomatic sources. This was Venezuela’s first summit as a full member of the South American trade and political block.
The incorporation of Bolivia to Mercosur must not become a “straight jacket” that leaves the country with no margin to negotiate trade agreements with other regions, said the private business organization, Bolivia Foreign Trade Institution, IBCE
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned from Cuba on Friday following cancer-related medical treatment, walking and joking at the airport in a first public appearance in three weeks that quashed rumours he might have been at death's door.
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez will not be attending the Mercosur summit on Friday as had been previously announced, announced on Thursday the Brazilian Foreign ministry which is hosting the event.
Mercosur Foreign ministers announced in Brasilia on Thursday that the suspension of Paraguay from the group stands at least until the coming presidential election on April 2013.
Paraguay must continue suspended from Mercosur following the group’s presidential summit on Friday, anticipated the head of the Latin American desk from the Brazilian Foreign ministry, Antonio Jose Ferreira Simoes.