Voices in Latin America and Europe are underlining the opportunity for the EU and Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, with Venezuela continuing outside these negotiations after being suspended from the Latin American bloc at the end of 2016) to move towards a free trade agreement in 2017, while the positon of the future US administration under president-elect Donald Trump as regards international trade remains largely unknown.
At the beginning of January, Argentina's minister for foreign affairs Susan Malcorra, whose country holds the reins of the rotating presidency of Mercosur in the first half of 2017, said the trade negotiations with the EU were "key priorities". "One of the most important subjects for Mercosur, if not the most urgent, is the negotiations with the EU. This is a priority", she said.
Mercosur has a "more positive" approach to these negotiations, and "with Brexit and Trump's victory in the US, friends must unite", Brazil's foreign minister José Serra said, as reported by Uruguayan news agency MercoPress on Monday 9 January.
The head of the European Parliament's delegation at the Euro-Latin American parliamentary assembly, Ramón Jáuregui Atondo (S&D, Spain), also underlines "the enormous significance" of Mercosur for the EU, "in a context of uncertainty with the arrival of Donald Trump at the White House", as reported by Uruguayan media.
The negotiations for an EU-Mercosur association agreement are "strategic, essential and must be concluded urgently", Jáuregui Atondo states, following the EU's signature of a cooperation agreement with Cuba in December 2016 (see EUROPE 11683) and the entry into force of a free trade agreement with Ecuador on 1 January (see EUROPE 11698) as part of the multiparty free trade agreement linking the EU with Colombia and Peru.
"2017 represents a window of opportunity, not necessarily to conclude the accord but to advance and give the talks credibility and a sense of irreversibility", MercoPress states, quoting South American sources.
Launched in 1999, frozen in 2005, then relaunched in 2010, the negotiations for an EU-Mercosur free trade agreement are again on track following the exchange of offers on market access (which covers goods, services and public procurement) on 11 May 2016 (see EUROPE 11549), then the first round of technical level talks in Brussels on 10-14 October 2016 (see EUROPE 11647). The second round is planned in Buenos Aires in March 2017. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)