Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission’s economic vice-president in charge of trade, expressed his confidence on Monday that «progress» can be made in the conclusion of the free trade agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur countries after the electoral victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil.
«We are ready to talk to the new government when it takes office and discuss how to move forward with Mercosur, the European Union is still committed to this agreement,» Dombrovskis told reporters in Prague, where he is participating in an informal meeting of EU trade ministers.
Asked by journalists, the EU trade official refused to assess whether the replacement of Jair Bolsonaro by Lula da Silva at the head of the Brazilian government will help the understanding because, he said, it is not for him to analyze electoral results of third countries.
Dombrovskis, who has a mandate to speak on behalf of the EU on trade matters, thus underlined the commitment to Mercosur and the willingness to talk about it with the new Brazilian president, without mentioning the difficulties he has encountered in recent years to revive the trade pact, largely because of the EU-27’s misgivings about Bolsonaro’s anti-climate change policies.
The European Union, in fact, is finalizing a proposal to include a clause to reinforce guarantees to combat deforestation and compliance with the Paris Agreements in the agreement with Mercosur.
A clause that the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, said last week that he hopes to present before the end of the year, with the aim of helping the ratification of the treaty by the EU-27.
However, the Mercosur agreement is still not on the list of trade pacts that Brussels lists as priorities that it hopes to conclude or give a definitive boost to between now and the end of next year.
CHILE AND MEXICO, SIGNING THIS YEAR «Our approach for next year is to sign agreements with New Zealand, Chile and Mexico and to make progress in the ongoing negotiations with Australia, Indonesia and India,» said Dombrovskis at the end of the informal meeting of EU trade ministers in which they discussed the need for the bloc to invest «more time and energy» in new agreements, aware of its weight in the changing geopolitical scene.
In this way, the Latvian politician avoided mentioning Mercosur among the third countries with which Brussels envisages definitive steps in the next twelve months, as did the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who last September called for speedy ratification of the agreements with Chile and Mexico but ignored the stalled pact with the Southern Cone countries.
In this regard, the Czech Deputy Prime Minister and responsible for Trade, Josef Síkela, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU until December, has hoped that the «political change» in Brazil, after the victory this Sunday of Lula da Silva, will have a «positive effect» on the negotiations with Mercosur and it will be possible to «make progress», without giving more details of the timetable that the EU-27 are contemplating.
