Mercosur has already submitted its counterproposal to the European Union (EU) to try to negotiate the ratification of a treaty between the two blocs that began negotiations 23 years ago, Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said this Wednesday.
MERCOSUR’s proposal is a response to new environmental requirements introduced by the EU earlier in the year, which increase the likelihood of sanctions and trade restrictions for non-compliance with environmental requirements.
Speaking on Brazilian public radio, Vieira said Mercosur, the EU’s main economic partner in Latin America, which accounts for almost 40% of total trade, wants the European bloc to be flexible in its environmental demands.
He also said that the EU should take into account that “Brazil has a very clear policy to save the Amazon”, which promises to end the deforestation of the largest forest on the planet by 2030 and help restore degraded rural land.
“I can’t give any guarantee that the European Union will accept it, let’s negotiate,” said Vieira, whose country is president of Mercosur this semester.
However, the Brazilian minister expressed confidence that negotiations on a trade agreement between the two blocs could be completed, since, he stressed, both the EU and MERCOSUR said “at the highest level that this is a strategic agreement.”
Vieira said negotiators from both blocs held a virtual meeting last Monday and will meet in person on Brazilian soil on September 15.
MERCOSUR and the EU resumed earlier this year negotiations on a preliminary agreement, which both blocs reached in 2019 after two decades of negotiations.
These negotiations have been complicated by new environmental demands put forward by Brussels, which Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay have called unacceptable.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is one of the leaders who has most publicly criticized the new European stance, describing these environmental demands as “green protectionism”.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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