“We are ready to sign the agreement between Mercosur and the European Union. Now it depends on the European Union, because we have already decided what we want here, and we have already communicated with them,” Lula said during the opening session of the forum A Project for Brazil, part of the new cycle of the Capital Dialogues series.
He said that the EU must make arrangements with France, which has difficulties with Brazilian agricultural products, “without a doubt it would have to compete with our cheese from the mines, our wine from Rio Grande do Sul.”
The president confirmed the sending of a statement on the position of Mercosur to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
“Now it depends only on them, it does not depend on us,” he stressed.
Brazil is the Mercosur member country leading the negotiations with the EU to close the pact.
The South American giant passed the presidency of the regional intergovernmental organization to Paraguay in December, but continued to lead the negotiations with European countries with the intention of making the commitment between the parties viable.
For more than 20 years, Mercosur and the EU have been negotiating an understanding that facilitates trade exchanges between the countries of the two blocs.
However, negotiations are barely moving forward and are still at a standstill.
When Lula took power for the third time in January 2023, he gave priority to negotiation and intensified dialogue with the Europeans.
Last year, the European Parliament approved the inclusion of a series of new requirements in the agreement, which ended up slowing down the negotiations.
The following are Mercosur members: Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Venezuela is currently suspended from the bloc.
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