Southern Common Market, commonly known as Mercosur, and the European Union will not sign the free trade agreement on the sidelines of the upcoming summit of the G20 in Buenos Aires, Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie told Sputnik.
BUENOS AIRES (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th November, 2018) Southern Common Market, commonly known as Mercosur, and the European Union will not sign the free trade agreement on the sidelines of the upcoming summit of the G20 in Buenos Aires, Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie told Sputnik.The G20 leaders will hold a meeting in Buenos Aires from November 31 to December 1.
"We are at the final stage of negotiations, we, perhaps, will be able to make a general political statement, but signing will take more time," Faurie said.
The minister also mentioned the new trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada (USMCA), stating that the Argentine authorities will create all conditions for this deal to be signed at the summit.
Mercosur is an economic organization, uniting Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, with Venezuela's full membership having been suspended since December 2016.
The trade relations between the European Union and Mercosur are based on the agreement on bilateral cooperation signed in 1999. Since then, there have been several attempts to negotiate the free trade agreement, but no results have been achieved so far. In October 2016, the sides launched a new round of negotiations followed by several meetings in 2017, which, however, have not led to any substantial results.
