French Foreign Trade Minister Sophie Primas cast doubt over the signing of the sweeping free-trade deal between the European Union and the Mercosur Friday, just days after other European officials hinted a deal is imminent.
Primas said on Friday in Brazil that she sees the change of an agreement being closed and signed during the G20 summit to be held on November 18 and 19 in Rio de Janeiro as "very hypothetical."
"For us, the French, and for other states, the conditions are not in place today to be able to sign in the coming weeks," the minister told the AFP news agency in São Paulo.
"A signature during the G20 seems to me, in any case, very hypothetical," she added, before a meeting with the French community.
On Wednesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, assured that the European Union is "very close to closing" an agreement with the South American bloc.
"We have two key dates: ... the G20 summit in November, in Rio de Janeiro, and also the Mercosur summit, in December of this year. Therefore, we will work to materialise" the agreement, he stressed.
But the French government of President Emmanuel Macron believes that the conditions presented by Paris to approve the agreement "have not been met."
"My message in Brazil was clear ... France set demanding conditions in terms of the environment and respect for standards, and currently they have not been met," Primas said previously in a statement.
"We will continue to fight for this, tirelessly, with all our interlocutors," he insisted.
Negotiations between the EU and the Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia), which have been stalled for years, have been given a boost in recent months by some European countries, such as Germany and Spain.
On Thursday, Primas participated in a meeting of G20 trade ministers in Brasilia.
"This G20 Trade meeting was also the best time for France to reaffirm our firm position on the EU-Mercosur agreement to our Latin American partners," he said.
Last week, Macron said the proposal to close the deal was "not acceptable" as it stands.
"We call for respect for the Paris [climate] agreements and protection of the interests of European industries and farmers," Macron said at the end of an EU summit.
The Brazilian government, for its part, was "optimistic about the progress of the discussions."
"The expectation is that the agreement will be concluded this year," said the Brazilian Ministry of Industry and Trade, after a meeting on Wednesday between Brazilian Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin and European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis.
In 2019, the parties reached a political agreement, but new obstacles nevertheless arose, especially due to opposition from France, which considered that the document does not adequately protect EU farmers.
– TIMES/AFP
