Representatives of the European Union approached the Brazilian government, through Itamaraty and the Ministry of Economy, with the aim of advancing negotiations on the Mercosur agreement, after a long period of stalled negotiations, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The indication of European rapprochement after a series of obstacles to effecting the agreement is seen by the Brazilian government as a sign of the redesign of global value chains, especially after the pandemic and the War in Ukraine, which would have increased Brazil’s power in negotiations. .
Since 2021, the European Union has been talking about sending a proposal for a complementary letter to the agreement with demands in the environmental area, amid the increase in deforestation rates in the Amazon that have made the government of President Jair Bolsonaro the target of scathing criticism abroad. This proposal, however, was never actually sent.
About two weeks ago, members of the government had a preliminary conversation with emissaries from the bloc and a new meeting is scheduled to take place until the end of September to outline a schedule of meetings, said one of the sources, who is from the government and spoke under condition. anonymity because the debates are private.
“This discussion was buried, they returned to discuss the agreement between Mercosur and the European Union precisely because they need agricultural, mineral and energy commodities, they can no longer count on Russia, there is the problem of supply chain disruption, excessive dependence on Asia “, said.
A European diplomat confirmed to Reuters the resumption of contact to carry out a new round of talks with Brazil.
According to the Brazilian government source, the Europeans said they are interested in ratifying the agreement and the two sides of the table will discuss the terms. The forecast of this authority is that the letter with the proposal of additional commitments in the environmental area will be received by the end of this year.
“The movement took on a new dynamic. It was paralyzed and walked again,” he said.
The contact takes place on the eve of October’s presidential elections, with the main candidate in the polls, former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, indicating that he would ask the EU to reopen negotiations on the agreement to add points on environmental protection, rights humans and technology.
Members of the current administration, on the other hand, believe that the 2019 agreement represents a concentration of interests and that reopening it, rather than just analyzing the parallel letter, would lead the negotiation to go back substantially, said the government source.
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE
After 20 years of negotiations, the free trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union was closed in 2019, at the beginning of Bolsonaro’s term. The entry into force, however, depends on the approval of the parliaments of the countries, a point that did not advance in the face of pressure from Europeans alleging worsening of environmental indicators in Brazil.
Last month, European lawmaker Anna Cavazzini and two other deputies from the Greens/European Free Alliance political group visited Brazil to assess the threat to the Amazon from illegal gold mining and logging under Bolsonaro. She told Reuters there was no way the trade deal could pass with Bolsonaro in office because it would be bad for the environment.
The movement against the conclusion of the agreement, led by the French government, placed the destruction of the Amazon as a determining point. In February of last year, still during the pandemic and before the outbreak of the war in Eastern Europe, the bloc’s ambassadors stated that the agreement would only be concluded after concrete advances by Brazil in this area.
Latest official data show that deforestation in the Amazon rainforest hit a record in the first seven months of this year, as the country heads into the worst period of the annual fire season.
The fact that EU emissaries came to Brazil shows, for the government, that the environmental issue had been used to delay the implementation of the agreement in the name of agricultural protectionist interests of some countries in the European bloc, and that it would no longer be decisive.
At an event last week, Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said that France is becoming irrelevant to Brazil, making a comparison with the increase in Brazilian trade with China.
Quoting a conversation with a French minister, he said that “you’d better treat us well, otherwise we’re not going to give a fuck about you.” “Either they open the market for us, Mercosur, we, the Argentines […] or they will become irrelevant to us,” he added.
After the statement, without citing Guedes, the French embassy in BrasÃlia said, in a publication on social networks, that the European country is the third largest economy in Brazil, with more than 1,000 companies employing almost 500,000 Brazilians.
Additional reporting by Isabel Versiani
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