São Paulo – The 39th Mercosur Summit will be held this Monday (2nd) and Tuesday in San Juan, Argentina. The meeting of heads of state per se will take place on the second day. According to information supplied by the Brazilian foreign ministry (Itamaraty), the agenda for the event, which includes the 39th Meeting of the Common Market Council (CMC), comprises topics such as the end of double taxation in the bloc, the regional Customs Code, the free trade agreement with Egypt, and the granting of tariff preferences to Haiti.
On Sunday, representatives of the governments involved were still discussing details pertaining to these matters. Negotiators for the Mercosur and Egypt, for instance, were going to attempt to conclude the agreement during the weekend so that it could be signed at the Summit. As of early last evening (1st), no information was available as to whether the effort had been successful.
Other topics, according to the Itamaraty, include approval of projects to be funded by the Mercosur Structural Convergence Fund (Focem). Projects include the building of a road in Paraguay; building of power transmission lines in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay; and the establishment of the Library of the Federal University of Latin American Integration and of the Mercosur Advanced Studies Institute. Seven projects are expected to be approved, totalling US$ 580 million in credit.
Even though they are not officially part of the agenda, misunderstandings between the governments of Colombia and Venezuela should be part of the talks, as the issue is current and the new Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, will be inaugurated this week. He is going to replace Álvaro Uribe, who has repeated disagreements with the Venezuelan Hugo Chávez.
Heads of state from the four countries that are full members (Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina) and the associate members (Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador). It is not yet known, however, whether the presidents of the associate member countries will attend the event themselves. The Egyptian minister of Industry and Trade, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, who is in Argentina and should come to Brazil on the 4th, is also being expected.
By the end of the Summit, Argentina is going to hand the bloc’s rotating presidency over to Brazil. It will be Brazil’s last tenure in the presidency during Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s term in office, which will end on December 31st. On Friday, the Brazilian president’s spokesperson, Marcelo Baumbach, informed that the “theme” of the Brazilian term in the bloc’s presidency will be “Mercosur: The Next Twenty Years,” taking into consideration that the bloc will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2011.
“President Lula wishes to place the Brazilian presidency’s propositional abilities at the service of a positive agenda for the Mercosur, with strongly innovative elements,” said Baumbach.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
