“The EU is willing to provide cooperation funds to help with the successful implementation of the Mercosur agreement,” Francisco García García, team leader for South America at the Directorate for Cooperation, told a group of journalists, including Infobae. with Latin America of the European Commission.
In Brussels, the heart of the European bloc, they did not give exact figures, but there is talk of “doubling or even tripling” the funds already allocated individually to South American countries.
Currently, the country that receives the most is Paraguay, with 80 million euros in cooperation funds. Brazil follows, with 70 million euros, and then there is Argentina, with 50 million euros (Uruguay currently does not receive funds). The South Americans, in addition to this figure, receive another portion that comes from the global cooperation budget with the entire region.
“We started talking about hundreds of millions of euros when now we only reach 200 million euros,” European sources confirmed enthusiastically.
After a first political agreement in 2019, Europe demanded guarantees from the South American bloc in environmental terms and respect for European food safety rules, which truncated the final agreement and reopened negotiations. In this scenario, the Mercosur countries saw how this entire European green chapter added a lot of uncertainty to South American companies for its implementation and they raised it with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, when she visited the region last year and met with Brazilian President Lula da Silva.
The Mercosur countries made clear the need to help each of the sectors not to lose competitiveness when the free trade agreement materializes.
Von der Leyen took note and began to devise a move to boost the signing of the agreement. He went to his cooperation agency to ask for solutions and what he proposed was the exponential increase in the cooperation figure so that companies from Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay can be competitive if, finally, the agreement between the blocs is signed.
The new million-dollar funds -refundable and non-refundable- will be distributed based on decisions of a new committee that will be created especially to make these decisions and will be made up of both blocks and technical representatives of the Directorate for Cooperation of the European Union .
The idea is to offer reinforcement for SMEs to help the green transition, ensure competitiveness and also traceability once the free trade agreement is finalized.
This EU proposal, in response to a South American complaint, is what is currently being negotiated, and is also a new sign of European interest in achieving the agreement.
Olof Gill, spokesperson for Trade and Agriculture of the European Union, expressed himself along those lines yesterday, when he confirmed that the current geopolitical scenario revived European interest in a free trade agreement with the South Americans. In fact, in the group of those who see the world stage as revitalizing the possible agreement, many even include France, one of the most conflictive partners when negotiating.
If the European proposal advances, the injection of European funds could become a relief. “The idea is that the implementation of the agreement with the European Union is smooth and successful for Mercosur,” they say in Brussels.Infobae.
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2024-06-02 01:44:27