Irish farmers occupied Monday afternoon the offices of the European Commission in Dublin, over fears of a multibillion-Euro threat to the livestock industry from Mercosur.
United States considers Mercosur as an “anti American” organization and fears the incorporation of Venezuela to the group made up of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay according to one of the latest Wikileaks to see light in the River Plate press.
European farmers’ organizations claimed on Thursday that current trade talks between the EU and Mercosur could lead to a “total collapse” of the EU beef sector.
The Paraguayan government announced Thursday it will insist with the Congressional approval of Venezuela’s incorporation to Mercosur, which remains stalled at the country’s Legislative branch.
Uruguay’s cabinet meeting spokesperson confirmed Wednesday that Argentina had “liberated” 75% of the import licences that remained delayed and which was one of the main points of the agenda in the recent summit between Uruguayan president Jose Mujica and Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
Pan American Energy has agreed to buy an oil refinery and more than 700 service stations in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay from Exxon Mobil Corp for which it will be paying an estimated 850 million US dollars.
Mercosur negotiations and Ireland’s share of the EU agriculture spending are seen as the main challenging demands for the new Agriculture minister of the Fine Gael-Labour coalition government in Dublin.
Mercosur (Common market of the South) is a good idea, badly implemented, and it does not have much of “common” and much less of a “market” argues Professor Andres Malamud, researcher at the Lisbon University Social Sciences currently on a lecture tour in Paraguay.
Argentina’s January trade surplus in January confirmed the shrinking tendency increasingly present all along 2010 as imports’ growth outpaced exports by two to one.
Mercosur central banks’ presidents meeting in Peru last Friday agreed that the task ahead has become ‘more complicated’ because of growing inflationary pressures triggered by soaring food and oil prices.