Mercosur calls for update to EU trade agreement

PUERTO IGUAZU, Argentina — The South American trade bloc Mercosur opened a two-day summit on Monday with host Argentina calling for an update to a long-paused trade deal with the European Union which it said was the product of an asymmetrical relationship.

The deal "reflects an unequal effort between asymmetric blocs and does not answer the needs of the current global scenario", said Argentine Foreign Affairs Minister Santiago Cafiero at the 62nd ordinary meeting of the Common Market Council of Mercosur, since the deal had taken 20 years of negotiation before it was concluded in 2019 and has yet to be ratified by each country's legislature.

The agreement, as it stands, had an excessive focus on environmental issues at the expense of economic and social considerations in largely agricultural and developing Mercosur members, Cafiero said.

A modified agreement "can be an effective means for our bloc to strengthen its participation in the rearrangement of the global map of production and work", he said, adding that it could also serve as a framework to spur investment in strategic sectors, such as conventional and renewable energies, mining, food and health.

"To see this potential materialize and the agreement have good results for both sides, it is necessary to work and update the 2019 texts," he said.

The meeting was held in Puerto Iguazu, in the northeastern Argentine province of Misiones. Present at the meeting were officials from all Mercosur member countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, along with Bolivia, which is in the process of joining the bloc.

The bloc, founded in 1991, represents 62 percent of South America's population and 67 percent of the continent's gross domestic product.

Xinhua - Agencies