Brussels, 25/01/2013 (Agence Europe) - Brazil is responding positively to Europe's appeal to take the lead in supporting an agreement on the liberalisation of trade with the South American bloc.
Meeting in Brasilia at the 7th EU-Brazil summit, President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, and their hostess, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, called on 24 January for negotiations to be quickly concluded on an association agreement between the EU and Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela - Paraguay being suspended and Bolivia in the process of accession). The association agreement is currently stumbling on the trade section which would create the biggest free trade area in the world.
At the end of the summit Van Rompuy said that they had expressed their strong political resolve to reach an agreement, while Barroso added that they had reaffirmed their efforts to achieve this. Rousseff described the EU-Mercosur ministerial meeting - a meeting which will take place on the sidelines of the EU-Latin America and Caribbean summit in Santiago de Chile on 26-27 January - as strategic. During this meeting they will have the chance to define the next steps of the negotiation, Rousseff said, believing this agreement to be very important for the two regions. For a successful outcome for this agreement - negotiations for which were started in 1999, frozen in 2004 and re-started in 2010 - Rousseff believes that a re-balancing of trade relations is needed, and she calls for progress in the respective offers with regard to market access so that the negotiation can move forward.
The European and Brazilian leaders are also looking to strengthen their economic relationship. They welcomed the progress of the strategic EU-Brazil partnership launched in 2007 and in the implementation of the joint 2014-2020 action plan. The bilateral sectoral dialogues now cover 30 areas. The European and Brazilian leaders decided to create a committee which will assess the potential for trade growth and investment between the two regions to give greater strength to the economic relationship between the EU and Brazil. On the sidelines of the summit, the business and industry associations from Europe and Brazil also called for the negotiations for an EU-Mercosur agreement to be accelerated and argued for bilateral trade and investment to be expanded, offering opportunities particularly in the agri-food, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals sectors and in energy infrastructure and sustainable technologies. The European association BusinessEurope wanted an EU-Brazil trade agreement to be planned in case negotiations with Mercosur remain blocked. (EH/transl.fl)