Lobby and pressures: the role of Brazilian and Argentinian businessmen in the agreement with the EU

In the interview with Jorge Fontevecchia, the Chancellor Jorge Faurie and the Minister of Production and Labor Dante Sica, The recent announcement of the Mercosur agreement – The European Union was, of course, one of the main pillars of the discussion. In this context, the role of Argentine and Brazilian businessmen was approached, as fundamental actors of the framework that is about to begin to roll this trade route with the Old Continent.

In this respect, Fontevecchia consulted them on the role of Brazilian Federation of Industrialists, the famous FIEJSP, a permanent power of the establishment, compared to the lesser influence of the Argentine Industrial Union, a subject that deserved a long badysis.

Sica noted that "the power of the FIEJSP that only the San Pablo Federation of Industry, so called as well as the UIA, is the National Confederation of Industry, the CNI, but the FIEJSP for having been the heart of the industrial center of Brazil, the famous Paulista Abec, and in turn until the reform of three years ago, had an important force ". He added: "Contribution problems were mandatory, unlike Argentina, not on the side of trade unions, but on the business side"

-Fontevecchia: For this to translate into an audience, the unions in Argentina are a mandatory contribution and in Brazil they are not. And conversely, in Brazil, contributions to business badociations are mandatory and, in Argentina, no.

–Sica: But in Brazil, it was the chambers of commerce and the unions. When businessmen asked that this be no longer mandatory, they also resigned from the compulsory nature of their contributions. As a result, all professional badociations tend to create jobs in order to provide services and continue to generate this funding. But the FIEJSP has always had a very strong capacity for lobbying and pressure on Brazilian public policies. I remember that in Lula's first government, the name of the tax on checks in Argentina was being discussed.

-Fontevecchia: Copy of Brazil …

–Sica: Exactly. There had to be a vote and they had to sort of put the votes in the legislature to ensure continuity or continue. The FIEJSP did a job all over Brazil and got the necessary votes so that the tax does not continue. In reality, it has a force, a presence and a pressure much higher than those of the Argentine Industrial Union.

-Fontevecchia: And in the lobby during all this negotiation …

–Sica: I would tell you the opposite. The lobby more than a lobby of the UIA was a more sectoral lobby. You know that in our industrial setting, we have much stronger sectors. There are sectors like the pharmacist that has always had a much stronger lobbying capacity and a lot more pressure. There are sectors as representatives of the metallurgical industry whose lobbying capacity is lower. Car manufacturers have a much stronger presence than others. There was a very dynamic consultation with the business sector. More than the UIA as the representative entity of the lobby in Argentina, the pressure of the sectoral chambers gives much more.

–Faurie: I think the creation of our professional badociations has been different in Brazil compared to Argentina, where, since the 50s and 60s, they have adopted a much more proactive attitude in public policy than what existed at home. In the 1980s, with the expression of the captains of industry, the interaction between the public, the government and the private sector began to intensify to determine where the model of growth and production lay. But there is gymnastics to develop and, as Dante has just said, the real lobbying gymnastics, without undue lobbying, productive sectors in Brazil is much more dynamic about the Congress with a presence inside the benches . Even now, it is reflected in Brazilian and religious social movements, have a strong representation in the bancadas, a task that has not yet been extended here

–Sica: It's an interesting fact. When we participated in the negotiations during the last stage last week, one of the restrictions to the closing of the negotiations, Teresa Garcia, who was Brazil's Minister of Agriculture, said: "I do not know not how much room for maneuvering I have, because I have to answer 240 On the other hand, the industrial sector is involved in public policies, as for example the case of Paulo Escaf, president of the FIEJSP for many years, who has submitted to legislative and executive positions and who wanted to become governor of São Paulo.In politics, you recognized industrial deputies and rural deputies.In Argentina, chambers of commerce have had an attitude, that we sometimes say during meetings, when we speak, to watch the game from the outside.look as he badly hit the ball, he should have entered this side. "There was little involvement . Some participating MPs end up not winning it, not because of pressure from the chambers of commerce, but because a political party says, "Why do not you give me such a person to become a member of Parliament?" ? ". Do you remember that during the presidency of Eduardo Duhalde had been encouraged? You had the case of Osvaldo Rial, who was a deputy. Mendiguren, which is the only one you can say, is the representative of this point of view. You see, trade unionists fought and always fought for greater participation on the lists. Sometimes things have improved or worse, but their involvement has been much greater.

-Fontevecchia: Dante could be that in this metaphor industry captains of the 80s began to try to resemble those of Brazil and quickly abort even in the militaristic metaphor of the captains of the end era of the dictatorship is that the Brazilian dictatorship has been an economic success and Argentina, in addition to all other disasters much worse, has also failed economically.

-Faurie: It was an effective development that they did

–Sica: Not in the case of Argentina.

-Fontevecchia: Being a businessman in Brazil in the 80s and 90s was not badly seen as in Argentina. What was the relationship between the economic failure of the Argentine model and the success of the Brazilian model?

–Sica: Part of the failure is not simply due to this lack of guidance in the model, which was much more liberal. Look at the contradiction. A military government with an economy that wanted to be liberal and remained half way.

-Fontevecchia: In Argentina …

–Sica: In Argentina against the developers of Brazil. But also in Argentina, we must recognize that there is a clear inability in recent decades in the business sector to engage effectively in the country model that it wants. We did not succeed – and the big national entrepreneurs had one – a model. The great contradiction that the UIA had historically. There were two main axes, one more open, which aimed at access to international markets, turned to more competitive sectors and, secondly, the industrial current, with the idea of ​​an economy more closed, centered on the internal market. This division, they even agreed, two years to the presidency, and then the other, it is as if we had never had the Civil War. We have never been able to give the industry a glimpse of a development model that can be shared in one way or another and to debate it, I am not saying impose it, on society. And to the political clbad. Clearly, after what you had, you had the attitudes of lobbying or pressure on the various political factors that went from one side to the other.

-Fontevecchia: You say that business clbad in Brazil has a model that shares. In Argentina, on the other hand, there are two models among entrepreneurs and the synthesis has not been produced.

–Sica: I make you a caricature. In the 1990s, the Brazilian business world imposed an impeachment on Collor de Melo because he wanted to open up the economy. In the 2000s, he was deposed Dilma because he wanted to close. At the time, in the 90s, there was still a very industrial trend, a very national image. The development of the agricultural border, agribusiness in Brazil, began to change this culture. The growth of the major industrial platforms has also made us understand that, already, the industrialists themselves, the internal market was too small and became a much more open and much more integrated model in the world. They were much more dynamic and managed to have a vision of the great national entrepreneurs who look at the country they want. In Argentina, we still have this discussion that we do not finish paying.

–Faurie: And that leaves us in time. This discussion that Brazil has in a different way but ours, when the world has changed terribly. This discussion should have been settled 20 or 30 years ago and we are still discussing the type of model we want. Therefore, in a way, the agreement between the European Union and Mercosur, with what Argentina has read, is like a computer principle that says, "Boys, you can not keep talking about it because you have to start doing these tasks in order to fill it. "

–Sica: This is the great opportunity to begin to steer public policies toward the goal of this goal. The output, the integration. But also begins to command the private sector in terms of "boys the pendulum turns and we must all enter through this great door that opens us from the point of view of business opportunities".

AG / H.B.