the uruguayan president Luis Lacalle Pou announced that Uruguay formalized its application to enter the Comprehensive and Progressive Treaty of Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), despite the opposition of its Mercosur partners who raised a joint note on Wednesday.
On his Twitter account, Lacalle Pou published: “The Minister of Foreign Affairs -Foreign Relations- Francisco Bustillo has just formally submitted in New Zealand the application to join the CPTPP”, a trans-Pacific agreement.
And he added: “It will be more opportunities for our country and our people. A Uruguay open to the world. We trust the Uruguayans and all their potential”.
For his part, the Uruguayan minister delivered the request to the head of Trade and Export Growth and head of Primary Industries of New ZealandDamien O’Connor, specified the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry in a statement.
Partners Warning
The officialization by the Uruguayan government occurred hours after Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay warn that they will adopt measures if the Uruguayan government continues with its intentions to carry out individual negotiations outside of Mercosur.
Through a note, they reject these “unilateral” negotiations and reserve the possibility of “adopting measures to defend their interests in the legal and commercial fields.”
The Treaty of Asuncion, constitutive of Mercosurestablishes the prohibition of full members to celebrate free trade agreements unilaterally outside the bloc.
While the Trans-Pacific Agreement “seeks to promote greater regional economic integration and cooperation among its members”, it was signed in 2018 and is made up of Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Brunei and Chile. .
Since his inauguration, in March 2020, Lacalle Pou insists that current international law empowers Uruguay “to advance in flexibility” of Mercosur and that his country needs to “open up to the world”.
In mid-July, the conservative president announced that his government formally began negotiations with China for a FTA (Free Trade Agreement), after a “positive conclusion” of the feasibility study.
Regarding the Mercosur summit to be held next week, Lacalle Pou estimated that it will be “entertaining” with this sea in the background. The summit could suffer the absence of the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, who is in the last month of his term, and apparently, the Chilean Gabril Boric and the Bolivian Luis Arce, presidents of states associated with Mercosur, would not attend.
To all this, the Paraguayan foreign minister, Julio César Arriola, ruled out a break within Mercosur on Thursday and confirmed that his country supports that the decisions of this integration mechanism be adopted jointly and by consensus. “The Mercosur bloc is not going to break,” Arriola told Radio 780 AM.
In 2021, the start of the dispute between Uruguay and its Mercosur partners had been experienced when Lacalle Pou described the block as a “ballast”which deserved the response of the Argentine president, Alberto Fernández.
“A load is something that causes one to be thrown from a ship and the easiest thing to do is get off the ship if the load weighs a lot,” the head of the Casa Rosada had retorted.
In the same sense, a few months ago, before the summit held in Paraguay, Uruguay announced negotiations to reach a Free Trade Agreement with China that was also rejected by the other Mercosur member countries and that, to date, have not it has even shown concrete public results.