The Diplomat
The State Secretary for Trade, Amparo López Senovilla, expressed her confidence on Thursday that “substantial progress” can be made before December in the negotiations for the association agreement between the European Union (EU) and Mercosur.
“We hope that the last round of negotiations on the agreement will be held in Brasilia; we also hope that the joint instrument can be concluded during the month of November and that substantial progress will be made in December,” López Senovilla told the press upon her arrival at the EU Trade Ministers’ Council. Negotiations with the EU will be among the main topics of the next Mercosur summit, which will be held between 5 and 6 December.
Specifically, the Trade Ministers discussed this Thursday in Brussels, among other issues, the negotiations underway with Mercosur and with countries such as Australia, Indonesia, India, Mexico, the Philippines and Thailand. Valdis Dombrovskis, Vice-President, Commissioner for Trade and currently Commissioner-designate for Economy, Productivity, Implementation and Simplification, informed the ministers about the state of play of the main negotiations.
“Negotiations with Mercosur are ongoing, we are making progress,” Dombrovskis told reporters, as quoted by the Efe agency. However, the commissioner did not want to set “specific deadlines at this time” for the end of negotiations for the Mercosur treaty, which France opposes because it considers that it will negatively affect its agricultural production.
The text has been closed since 2019 but the signing process remains stalled due to concerns from some EU countries about deforestation in the Amazon and the impact of the agreement on European agriculture. The two parties are negotiating an annex to the text of the agreement to overcome these differences.
Upon her arrival in Brussels, French Foreign Trade Minister Sophie Primas said that her country wants the Paris Agreement on climate change to be included as an “essential clause” in the agreement with Mercosur and warned that some Mercosur countries have doubts about the Paris Agreement.
