The EU and Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) are “very close” to concluding an agreement in principle for a free trade agreement. These assurances were provided by the European Commission Vice President in charge of economic issues, Jyrki Katainen, at the end of his meeting with Brazilian President, Michel Temer, on Friday 10 November in Brasilia, where a range of technical level talks were being concluded that day.
“We’re that close to having a new trade accord between EU and Mercosur,” EU Commissioner Jyrki Katainen said, holding his index finger and thumb slightly apart. In a thinly veiled message to US President, Donald Trump, Mr Temer, asserted, “At a time when some are building walls, we want to build bridges”.
Aloysio Nunes, the Head of Brazilian diplomacy, explained, “Today we are concluding a negotiating cycle that I hope will be the last or one but last, so that we can conclude, what is both our optimistic and realistic objective of an agreement by the end of the year”.
The South Americans provided assurances that the two parties were actively seeking a political agreement during the WTO ministerial conference on 10-13 December in Buenos Aires.
At the end of a meeting of EU Trade Ministers on Friday in Brussels, the Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström, boasted of the “strong political support” at the Council for concluding these talks and described the possibility of doing this by the end of the year as “realistic”.
Ms Malmström also highlighted the “unique opportunity” of reaching a political agreement with Mercosur before the general elections in Brazil in October 2018.
During the exchange of revised offers on trade access for goods, services and public procurement in October, the EU also introduced the possibility of exchanging import tariff quotas of 70,000 tons of beef for 600,000 tons of ethanol.
This offer, however, was below Mercosur’s expectations, which described these quotas as well below those proposed at the beginning of the negotiations in 2004, of 100,000 tons of bovine meat and 1 million tons of ethanol. The Europeans, however, described the revised South American offer insufficient with regard to access to public markets.
With France at the head of them, 12 member states called for an appropriate taking into account of their sensitive agricultural products – beef, ethanol, poultry, sugar and honey.
On Friday, Ms Malmström announced an exchange of final offers and said, “We are being attentive to agricultural sensibilities but we cannot lose sight of the overall picture”.
She added, “We’re going to have to present our final offer. We will make a proposal very soon so that ministers can examine the question”. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)