The previous summit between the European Union and Brazil was nine years ago. The President of the European Council invited Lula da Silva to hold another soon and finalize the EU-Mercosur agreement.
The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, held a bilateral meeting with the Brazilian President, Lula da Silva, in Buenos Aires, in which he defended the conclusion of the EU-Mercosur agreement and the holding of a new EU-Brazil summit.
The spokesman for the President of the European Council indicated this Wednesday that, on the sidelines of the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), held in Argentina, and to which he was invited, Charles Michel met on Tuesday with Lula da Silva, having expressed “the firm support of the European Union to the democratic institutions of Brazil”, in light of the attacks they suffered in Brasilia at the beginning of the month.
According to the spokesman, Barend Leyts, the Belgian president also welcomed “President Lula’s decision to bring Brazil back to CELAC, as the EU intends to intensify its relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly in areas such as the fight against climate change, the defense of biodiversity and the promotion of renewable energies”.
Leyts then pointed out that, within the framework of the “EU commitment to intensify bilateral relations, the President of the Council also expressed interest in starting work for an EU-Brazil summit”, recalling that the previous one took place almost nine years ago.
The first summit between the European Union and Brazil took place in Lisbon in 2007, during the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the EU, when the strategic association between the parties was launched. The most recent (the seventh) took place in February 2014, at a time when José Manuel Durão Barroso was President of the European Commission and Dilma Rousseff was President of Brazil.
Charles Michel also invited Lula da Silva to participate in the EU-CELAC summit scheduled for the next 17 and 18 July in Brussels.
At the meeting held in Buenos Aires, and also according to the spokesman, Charles Michel also stressed that “an important aspect of the relationship between the EU and Brazil is the EU-Mercosur agreement”, after having called for the new political ‘momentum’ to take advantage of to definitively overcome the impasse in the process of ratification and entry into force of the trade agreement.
The EU trade agreement with the Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) was agreed by the parties in 2019when the negotiations concluded, but its ratification is paralyzed by environmental reservations raised by several Member States, led by France.
At the moment, the EU is working on a declaration that specifies the environmental commitments, especially in the case of Brazil, which has to do with combating deforestation in the Amazon, aggravated during the tenure of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, and ensuring compliance. of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Finally, during the bilateral meeting, and in the part dedicated to the current geopolitical situation, and in particular to Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, Charles Michel stressed “the importance of multilateralism and the defense of the international order based on rules and respecting the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” his spokesman concluded.
Source: Observadora
