COPENHAGEN: The European Union (EU) and Mercosur exchanged revised market access offers on Wednesday in an attempt to re-launch long-stalled free trade negotiations.
Mercosur is a trade bloc made up of South American countries Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, among others.
This is the first exchange of offers between the EU and Mercosur since 2004. The European Commission, EU’s chief executive body said it was an essential step to move the negotiating process forward.
“Both sides remain fully committed to this negotiation, in view of the important economic and political gains expected for both sides from a comprehensive, ambitious and balanced EU-Mercosur Association Agreement,” said a joint statement published Wednesday.
The two sides are to hold a chief negotiators’ meeting before the summer to take stock of the negotiations and to prepare a schedule of meetings for the second half of the year, the statement said.
The EU is currently negotiating a trade agreement with Mercosur as part of the overall negotiation for a bi-regional association agreement which also covers a political and a cooperation component.
Since the official re-launch of the EU-Mercosur negotiations in 2010, both parties have on many occasions declared a willingness to progress with their free trade negotiations, launched over a decade ago in 2000.
However, at the end of last year, the EU and Mercosur failed to agree on a target level for tariff removal. The EU executive insisted that the removal of 87 percent of all tariff lines, offered by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela in October, was not enough. It argued that a minimum point of departure should be 90 percent, given that the EU’s own offer covered 91.5 percent of all tariff lines.
The EU is Mercosur’s first trading partner, accounting for 20 percent of Mercosur’s total trade in 2013. EU-Mercosur trade in that year was 110 billion euros (125 billion U.S. dollars). Meanwhile, Mercosur was the sixth most important export market for the EU in 2013. EU exports to the region totalled 57 billion euros in 2013.
Mercosur was set up in 1991. In addition to its five full members, it also has several associated countries and observer countries.
