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Present activities for MERCOSUR



It is a fact that Mercosur is a beneficial organization for its members. To reach this, it developed these measures:
A common external tax was established for trading with third states and an internal commercial policy was developed. Also, the policies to guarantee fair competitiveness between the members, which have different currencies, and of course the free trade through Mercosur’s countries borders. 

Among all this, as the news agency Mercopress says, the use Mercosur has is:
“To increase the efficiency and competitiveness of all member economies by opening markets, promoting economic development in the framework of a globalized world, improving infrastructure and communications, making better use of available resources, preserving the environment, generating industrial complementation and coordinating macroeconomic policies.” (South Atlantic News Agency, 2019)

However, we can't go through our project and leave behind the present projects MERCOSUR is carrying out. So we decided to look into some basic problems now. As it was previously mentioned, in July of 2019, Mercosur and The U.E had reached an agreement, which is expected to be extremely beneficial for both regional organizations. For Europeans, 91 percent of tariffs on their exports are abolished, which will save up to 4000 million euros. While the Latin Americans will receive a European Union's investment of 381,000 million euros, for 52,000 million of Mercosur within the community territory. (Manso, 2019)

Even though to reach this agreement every member of Mercosur and the EU had to be in favor of it, there were countries that were initially reticent. An example would be Austria, which reconsidered the proposal when numerous intentional fires took place in the Amazon rainforest. Greenpeace warned that if Brazil (mostly agricultural producer) was going to have higher exportations, it was highly likely that farmers would have burned large areas of jungle to obtain more farmland. Also, France’s environment minister, Elisabeth Borne, has said that the country will not sign the deal under current conditions. “We can’t sign a trade treaty with a country that doesn’t respect the Amazon forest, that doesn’t respect the Paris treaty. France will not sign the Mercosur deal under these conditions,” Borne told BFM TV, according to White, 2019.

Mercosur’s organization has determined an interest in establishing policies against climate change recently,  however, this has faced some difficulties, due to the fact that members are mostly developing countries, so environmental limitations and strict policies can affect negatively to their emerging economies: “developing countries as a group have lower levels of domestic environmental capacity and public environmental concern than do the postindustrial countries” (Hochstetler, 2008)

Also, Mercosur is taking part in the 2030 Agenda to Sustainable Development, a large global agreement to eliminate poverty and move towards a sustainable path towards inclusive development. To reach it, 17 goals have been proposed to improve human rights recognition.

References:


Hochstetler K. 19.12.2008 Fading Green? Environmental Politics in the Mercosur Free Trade Agreement. Cambridge University. (4) p. 2 Retrieved from:

Manso C. 08.07.2019 Acuerdo UE-Mercosur: un gol al proteccionismo en el tiempo extra. ABC. Retrieved from: https://www.abc.es/economia/abci-acuerdo-ue-mercosur-proteccionismo-tiempo-extra-201907070219_noticia.html

South Atlantic News Agency, (2019) About Mercosur. Mercopress. Retrieved from: https://en.mercopress.com/about-mercosur

White M. 16.10.2019 Austria blocks “nice on paper” EU-Mercosur trade deal. GTR Global Trade Review. Retrieved from: https://www.gtreview.com/news/europe/austria-blocks-nice-on-paper-eu-mercosur-trade-deal/




 

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