The Brazilian president said this before his Uruguayan colleague Lacalle Pou, who is advancing in a bilateral treaty with Beijing.
Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva considered this Wednesday “urgent” that Mercosur close an agreement with the European Union (EU) before negotiating with China. He did it during a visit to Uruguay, that it is advancing trade negotiations with Beijing on its own and generating turbulence among its partners in the bloc.
During his stay in Montevideo after participating on Tuesday in the Celac summit in Buenos Aires, Lula also winked at the opposition by holding meetings with former President José Mujica (2010-2015) and other figures from the left-wing Frente Amplio (FA) coalition.
But one of the core parts of his visit was linked to the future of the bloc. “It is urgent and extremely necessary for Mercosur to reach an agreement with the EU”Lula urged after meeting with his Uruguayan counterpart Luis Lacalle Pou. “We are going to intensify our discussions with the EU and sign that agreement so that we can immediately discuss an agreement between China and Mercosur,” added the visitor, who arrived at the presidential residence accompanied by his wife Rosangela.
Uruguay began negotiations with Beijing and asked to enter the Trans-Pacific Agreement without the consent of its Mercosur partners, generating tensions and warnings from Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay that the bloc could crack. But Lacalle Pou was clear in pointing out that “we belong to Mercosur and we have that vocation unchanged.”
An example of these tensions even came from Lula’s own foreign minister, Mauro Viera, who said that an agreement between Uruguay and China would “destroy” Mercosur for contradicting the bloc’s integration policies. “If it is negotiated outside the Common External Tariff, it destroys the tariff; Destroying Mercosur is of no interest to anyone,” Viera said in an interview with the newspaper Newspaper.
The Montevideo government has been asking Mercosur for greater flexibility for years, as well as trade opening, a claim that Lula considered “more than fair” during his visit yesterday. “It is fair to want to produce more and want to sell more. That is why an opening is important, ”he pointed out, while he said he was“ totally in agreement ”with renewing Mercosur“ everything that is necessary ”.
Despite the “optimism” expressed by Lacalle Pou after the meeting with Lula, the stresses within the block are installed. The partners have made it clear that the Uruguayan position of promoting agreements with third parties violates the founding statutes of Mercosur, created in 1991, and they even threatened Montevideo with legal and commercial measures.
Uruguay considers that Argentina and Brazil have also breached the statutes with the adoption of measures such as reductions in the Common External Tariff and maintains that other founding postulates, such as creating a customs union or a common market, have not been fulfilled.
After the meeting with Lacalle Pou, Lula went to a meeting with the mayor of Montevideo, Carolina Cosse, one of the main figures of the FA. The Brazilian received a medal for his contribution to the environment from Cosse, in a public ceremony from the balcony of the Municipality.
Later, Lula went to the farm of his friend José Mujica in Rincón del Cerro, where the president of Brazil and his wife, Rosangela, embraced Mujica and his wife, former senator and former vice president Lucía Topolanski.
Away from the press, they sat down to talk under a green and red awning in the front garden of the farm. Later, Lula and Mujica took a ride inside the property in the old Volkswagen beetle of the ex-president.
After the meeting, former President Mujica told reporters that Lula “is in a very difficult game” after the January 8 riot in Brasilia, and that he is “bitter” about “the situation in his country.”
On regional integration, he pointed out that “many things must be done that do not have to separate us between left, right and center” because otherwise “we are ballot (we are dead).” He also urged to “improve Mercosur.”
According to the Montevidean newspaper The ObserverMujica alluded to the discussion around Mercosur and said that “we (for Uruguay) are on the side of a monster that has stacked problems.”
In his press conference after the meeting with the Brazilian president, Mujica acknowledged that Uruguay “needs to trade”, but urged to be careful since “it must take care of what it has in the neighborhood”.
“Uruguay -Mujica exemplified- has the challenge of Tarzan: ‘When he grabbed a liana and wanted to grab another, he couldn’t leave [la primera] until I was caught ”in the second, he reflected.