Buenos Aires (EFE).- Five South American presidents and one elected will meet next Tuesday at the semi-annual summit to be held by Mercosur in the Argentine city of Puerto Iguazú and which will have trade negotiations with the European Union (EU) as one of its central themes.
Official sources confirmed to EFE that the heads of state of the four full members of the bloc created in 1991 will be present at the regional meeting: Alberto Fernández from Argentina, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from Brazil, Luis Lacalle Pou from Uruguay and Mario Abdo from Paraguay. Benitez.
Luis Arce, president of Bolivia, a country in the process of full accession to Mercosur, and the president-elect of Paraguay, Santiago Peña, who will take office next August, will also attend.
The meeting will take place in a luxurious hotel inside the Argentine Iguazú National Park (1,300 kilometers northeast of Buenos Aires), which protects the imposing Iguazú Falls, on the border between Argentina and Brazil.
The presidential summit will have as a prelude on Monday morning a regular meeting of the Common Market Council (CMC) of Mercosur, with the presence of the foreign ministers of the four member states and Bolivia.
On Monday afternoon, the representatives of the countries associated with the bloc (Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana and Suriname) will join.
In parallel, that afternoon there will also be a meeting of Ministers of Economy and Presidents of Central Banks of Mercosur, Bolivia and associated countries.
The deliberations on Tuesday will be chaired by Alberto Fernández, who, in addition to transferring the Presidency of the bloc to Lula da Silva, will take stock of Mercosur’s activity during the first semester.
According to Argentine government sources, progress was made in the bloc’s external negotiations in the first half of the year, in particular, in the bloc’s preparatory work for negotiations with the European Union, “with the aim of balancing and updating ” the political agreement reached in 2019 and which is now the subject of revisions and new negotiations.
Argentina’s pro tempore Presidency in Mercosur has also worked in the negotiations to deepen the free trade agreement with Israel, promote talks with the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Honduras, and promote the start of trade negotiations with the United Arab Emirates.
In 2022, Mercosur’s total trade with the rest of the world reached a record of 752.6 billion dollars.
Regarding intra-bloc trade, after a period of slowdown following the 2009 financial crisis and the covid-19 pandemic, in the last two years exchanges between the four partners of the bloc have gained renewed momentum.
Thus, exchange volumes went from 33,000 million dollars in 2019 -before the outbreak of the pandemic- to 46,000 million in 2022, the highest value since 2014.
The fastest growing products were manufactured goods of industrial origin, including vehicles and chemical products.