The president of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, reiterated yesterday the opinion that Mercosur should be “a springboard” for its partners “and not a corset or a burden”, an idea that he expressed during the last summit of the bloc and that generated a clash with his Argentine counterpart, Alberto Fernández.
“We have a vocation for the regional integration of Mercosur. We have a vocation for Mercosur to be a springboard and not a corset or a ballast,” declared the president to the press who was waiting for him at the doors of the Maciel hospital in Montevideo, where he received the first dose of CoronaVac vaccine against COVID-19.
The Uruguayan president insisted on the idea that he has defended since the beginning of his administration, which is the “flexibilization” of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) to search for individual trade agreements with third countries.
“When we finished those meetings (private with each one of the leaders) I spoke (before the press) about flexibility, which means that I raised it with the presidents of the bloc,” said Lacalle Pou, referring to the lunches held in recent months. in Uruguay with Fernández and the Paraguayan Mario Abdo Benítez and in Brazil with his counterpart Jair Bolsonaro.
The president of Uruguay recalled that last Friday, during the Summit of presidents for the 30 years of the bloc, “there was no declaration from Mercosur” because his country insisted that this term should be included “and since that was not agreed, someone He said: “If that paragraph does not go there is no statement.”
Lacalle Pou said that “relations within the bloc have to be complementary” and based on commonalities between the partners.
In the meeting on Friday between the presidents of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay – the founders of the bloc – and the partners Chile and Bolivia, the differences on the joint strategy of commercial opening were evident.
Although the meeting was summoned to commemorate in harmony the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Asunción, which created the Common Market of the South in 1991, the speeches included positions and crosses on the future of the bloc.
Lacalle Pou ruled that “what cannot be and should not be (Mercosur) is a burden” and was against the bloc being “a corset” for the members.
Faced with this, Fernández dismissed the event thus: “What I emphasize is that we end those ideas that help unity so little at a time where unity matters so much to us. We don’t want to be a burden on anyone. If we are a burden, what take another boat. “