European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström tweeted that ‘important progress’ was made in the talks on an Association Agreement between the EU and the Mercosur bloc (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) after a ministerial assessment meeting on Wednesday 18 and Thursday 19 July in Brussels, the first since the end of January.
As we were going to press. no other information had filtered out about the outcome of the ministerial meeting on the follow-up to the negotiations, as general elections loom in Brazil (in October), which have for a long time been seen as the horizon for an agreement in principle.
The last round of technical talks (9-13 July in Brussels) only reached ‘limited progress’ on questions that are pro-active interests for the EU – cars and spare parts, geographical indicators, maritime services and dairy products, explained the Commission at the start of he week.
On 16 July, Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan ruled out the EU and Mercosur being able to rapidly conclude their free trade talks because the last round of talks had not achieved great results. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)