“We are nobody’s ballast, Mercosur is an honor” …

The meeting was planned as a rather formal act, with no work schedule: the celebration of 30 years of Mercosur This was the announced reason for the special meeting that Alberto Fernández led yesterday – given that Argentina holds the Pro Tempore presidency – from the Bicentennial Museum. With the balance over the three decades of the regional bloc and the unprecedented pandemic scenario as a predictable backdrop, the meeting followed a course of crude confrontation with the intervention of the Uruguayan president, Luis Lacalle Pou: With well-known rhetoric, he began to speak of “being honest”, of “flexibility”, of asking for more openness of external tariffs and “to deepen the free trade zone”. “Mercosur should not be a burden, we do not want to turn it into a corset”, Filming. President Alberto Fernández’s response was even more rude and forceful: “We are nobody’s ballast, it is an honor to be part of Mercosur. If we are a ballast, let them take another ship”.

“We must move forward in negotiations with other blocs, we are not satisfied“Lacalle Pou began.” The Mercosur obviously weighs, what cannot be is a burden. We don’t want to turn it into a corset that our country can’t move in. Our people demand that we move forward in the international concert, it demands of us opportunities for progress. We need to deepen the free trade area, honestly these aspects to see if they come to fruition. And so we will formally propose that the issue of flexibility be discussed at the table“, publicity.

Fernández answered him directly about the end, after listening to all the presidents. “I would like to stay with the expression of most of us: to continue to find mechanisms to move forward, mechanisms of consent. And that basically we can all feel like brothers, “he contextualized.” If we have become a burden, I’m sorry. A load is something that kicks you off a ship, and the easiest thing to do is get off the ship if that load is heavy. Let us end with these ideas which contribute so little to unity. We don’t want to be nobody’s ballast. If we are a burden, let them take another ship, but we are no one’s burden. It is an honor to be part of Mercosur. “

More counterpoints

This was not the only counterpoint of looks around the burning question to be resolved on external tariffs. The confrontational role was not expected to be enthusiastically taken on by Lacalle Pou, which some might have imagined reserved for Bolsonaro. The Brazilian president limited himself to a brief speech, perhaps unable to go into detail with a Brazil accumulating statistics on terrorism – over 300,000 deaths from covid, the recent record of 100,000 infections in a single day, accumulating a total of more than 12 million, the health collapse just around the corner and the community traffic of the new strain, a threat that has forced to close the passage by land and air with this country, as the Argentina did so recently.

But even so, he added his own: he spoke of “the premises of political and economic freedom”, of “the Mercosur modernization agenda”, of facilitating the integration of the bloc into the “global value chains” through “rules that enhance the business climate”. “We understand that the rule of consensus (the common external tariff, the question under debate) cannot be a tool of veto or of permanent brake,” he said. More than talking, Bolsonaro has acted: in recent days, Brasilia has unilaterally reduced some import tariffs, implicitly. breaking the rules as a block partner.

In the same sense, the intervention of the presidents of Paraguay, Miguel Abdo Benítez. The meeting was also attended by the leaders of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, and Bolivia, Luis Arce. Fernández, from Buenos Aires, was accompanied by Chief of Staff Santiago Cafiero and Foreign Minister Felipe Solá.

There were more subtle crosses: Luis Arce, for example, during his first participation in the bloc’s meetings, reaffirmed “Bolivia’s desire to be part of Mercosur as a full member”. And he thanked, without mentioning them, the countries which have already ratified the protocol of accession of this country. It is that nine years after the signing of this protocol, the confirmation of the Senate of Brazil remains for its full incorporation into the bloc.

For your platform

From the national government, they put cold rags in the process, analyzing Lacalle Pou’s proposal more as a bravado “for his platform” than as a very marked difference within the bloc and the future decisions to be taken. “The real meeting will be in April”, they assessed, referring to the meeting of foreign ministers to be held in Buenos Aires on the 22nd, this time in person, as planned.

Alberto Fernández’s intervention, in fact, was not completely closed, flat or in any case to the opening declaimed and under discussion. Although he said he did not believe that “a partial and linear reduction of the Common External Tariff (CET) of Mercosur for the entire tariff universe is the best instrument, given the possibility of new agreements with other countries “, he also mentioned the need for an “improvement” of the external tariff and the coordination of macroeconomic policies, “to continue moving towards a common market consensus”.

He announced that Argentina’s proposal to revise the CET – which will be discussed at the regional ad hoc group meeting on April 22 – “It is based on preserving the balance between the agro-industrial and industrial sectors.” “We aspire to an agreement towards the end of our presidency pro tempore, so that its application is possible in the near future”, he concluded.

In this same line it was Felipe Solá in the exchange he had with the press at the end of the meeting. “If you have to negotiate, you have to put something on the table. If before doing so, what he had already lowered, for example, the common external tariff, you have nothing more to negotiate “”, he analyzed. “Some countries, like Uruguay, have the idea of ​​concluding agreements outside Mercosur. It is an idea present in the bloc, in the same way that Brazil sees the common external tariff as a wall. for us it is a barrier which protects us from countries which have hidden export subsidies “.

“We don’t want to be a drag on sitting down to negotiate the deals. We believe that the common external tariff can be lowered, if it is a proposal that suits us all, ”the Chancellor concluded.

The old days of roasting

When he assumed the pro tempore presidency of Mercosur, last December, Fernández was careful to mark the differences with the ideas of openness and absolute free trade that guide the interventions of right-wing governments, speaking of generating a bloc “Different” and the introduction of concepts such as “social inclusion”.

By then, he had bridged the gap with a trip to Cologne where he shared a barbecue with Lacalle Pou. And already at the time he was instructed to specify that he did not occupy a position totally opposed to the signing of free trade agreements such as the one which is still awaiting approval with the European Union, with details of the concern to preserve local economies.

A question which remains open for the next Mercosur working meeting, and which appears to be the great regional challenge.