The planned free-trade agreement between the European Union and five Latin American countries is not making the continent’s leading economic power happy.
Contrary to popular belief in Europe, the trade agreement between the Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia) and the European Union (EU) is also a divisive issue in Brazil. As discussions have intensified in recent months, dissenting voices have become all the more vocal. Brazil’s left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva hopes that the agreement will be announced before the end of the year.
Supporters of the agreement are impatient, as they see it as a golden opportunity to stimulate growth. Concluded in 2019 after twenty years of negotiations, it was reopened following the policy of deforestation of the Amazon led by far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, and strongly criticized by Europeans, led by France. Brazilian supporters of the agreement have been waiting for it with even greater impatience since the election of Donald Trump in the United States and the protectionist threats to their exports on the…
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