The Mercosur Summit exhibited this Tuesday in the Argentine city of Puerto Iguazú all the flaws and brakes that lead to the commercial bloc not having the power it could have.
“Another Summit, one more Summit. We are not analysts of what is happening in the world. We are actors, we are creators of our own future,” complained the president of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou.
“The immobility is what worries us,” added the representative of the smallest country in the bloc, who proposed to meet with the President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, during the Celac Summit on July 17 and 18 in Brussels.
The proposal is not to the liking of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil and, for the next six months, of Mercosur: at the recent G7 Summit in Hiroshima it was planted by the Ukrainian, annoyed by the usual comparisons that the Brazilian makes between the responsibilities of Moscow and Kiev in the war.
Lacalle and Paraguay’s outgoing president, Mario Abdo Benítez, agreed to propose agility and modernity in the face of the at times seventies rhetoric of Lula and Argentine Alberto Fernández.
“Here, in the peace of the south, there is the present and the future, while in the north, where the bombs explode, only the cold calculation of the powerful nests,” Fernández declared before adding: “The south also exists, he said Mario Benedetti”.
After raising the need for a “green agenda”, Lula said that he will work to incorporate Bolivia as a full member of Mercosur as soon as possible, adding that the pact is much more than a trade agreement.
“Our integration must also be indigenous, black, peasant and worker,” emphasized the Brazilian president.
Fernández and Lula agreed on their annoyance with the EU, giving them little hope of advancing in the association agreement between Mercosur and the European Union, which has been in negotiation for 24 years. “The presentation of new demands in environmental matters by the EU after four years during which the negotiating process was virtually stopped due to political differences in Europe, presents us with a partial vision of sustainable development, a vision excessively focused on the environment, with no record of the three dimensions of sustainability: environmental, economic and social, and the interaction between them”.
The situation in Venezuela was also the subject of dispute. “It is clear that Venezuela is not going to come out with a veneer of democracy if a candidate with the potential of María Corina Machado is disqualified for political and not legal reasons,” criticized the Uruguayan Lacalle Pou. “I think that Mercosur has to give a clear signal to move towards a full democracy, which clearly does not have it today.”
Abdo Benítez followed similar paths: “I have always sought to give a voice to the long-suffering Venezuelan people. When a light of hope appears with the holding of elections, we quickly saw that light go out with the disqualification of María Corina Machado.”
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