Authors: Bruna Barrento and Maria Julia Zito
In the South American scenario, the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) consists of a customs union between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. In this sense, the members of this agreement have common external tariffs. Whereas in the European scenario, the European Union consists of a political and economic union with free movement of people, services and capital between 27 economies of Europe. It should be added that such unions constitute a mostly economic relationship. In addition, in 2019, the EU presented itself as Mercosur's second largest trading partner. Thereby, it was decided to establish a macrostructure to support the relationship between the two blocks. Thus, negotiations began in 1999 on the drafting of an agreement that was announced in June 2019.
Since then, like this, there has been no progress towards ratification of the agreement. No end of August (Globe, 2020), Mourão, Brazil's vice president said that there was a “great effort” to articulate the agreement that now “seems to be starting to make water” indicating the unfavorable scenario for ratification. Besides that, In the beggining of september
(German wave, 2020), German ambassador Heiko Thoms in Brazil stated that Germany still has an interest in the agreement, however, there is an urgent need for concern with the environmental sustainability established in the agreement and the Brazilian commitment, indeed, with the Amazon. In addition, in day 9 of September (German wave, 2020), 22 researchers from American and European institutions published an article pointing out the divergence between the trade agreement and the European environmental guidelines, which demonstrates yet another impasse for ratification. Going beyond the middle of September (This is, 2020) , more of 30 NGOs, through an open letter, demanded that Emmanuel Macron, president of France “definitively bury” the EU-Mercosur Agreement, arguing that the environmental and human rights consequences would be “disastrous”.
In this way, understand that the scenario does not happen, per hour, as favorable to ratification and signature of the agreement, since despite Germany, as an important member of the EU, still consider it positive. Brazil is, consequently, Mercosur does not have
past credibility and seem not to have demonstrated sufficient commitment to sustainability and the Amazon before the international system.
