ISDS Case Map
Mercosur
Mexico's entry to Mercosur is “essential,” President Néstor Kirchner insisted yesterday after a meeting with his Mexican peer Felipe Calderón in Mexico City.
Mercosur presidential summit in Paraguay approved Friday steps to speed cross-border shipments of meat and vegetables on Friday, but postponed action on other key issues amid calls for greater unity.
Brazil wants a "goodwill gesture" from Venezuela before its Congress votes it into the Mercosur trade bloc, but President Hugo Chavez's government indicated Thursday it won't be extending an olive branch any time soon.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has to enter the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) as a full member first, before starting to make reforms, as he has hinted he intends to do, said Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs Celso Amorim in an interview daily newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo published on Sunday.
South America's 15-year-old Mercosur trade bloc -- made up of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela -- recently inaugurated a European Union-styled regional parliament here amid hopes by many Uruguayans that this capital will become ``the Brussels of South America.''
Union minister of commerce and industry Kamal Nath said on Monday that Brazil and India have set a target of bilateral trade of $ 10 billion by 2010.
Government today said a trilateral agreement with trade bloc Mercosur and South Africa Customs Union (SACU) is under consideration to widen the scope of South-South Cooperation.
Latinamerica has never been so divided, Mercosur is but an illusion of integration and Brazil has lost its leadership and convergence capacity according to former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso who ruled from 1995 to 2000.
European trade with Latin America will grow as a result of growing interest among companies on each side of the Atlantic, as will European investment in the region, which is already growing significantly. And while free trade agreements with Central America and the Andean Community will help boost EU trade with Latin America, the big prize is Mercosur.
A top European Union trade negotiator begins this week an official visit to the four Mercosur country members in an attempt to re-launch the stalled talks with the South American block for an association agreement.
