Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou insisted that his government aspires that Mercosur is not “a corset or a burden”, that it is necessary to “open up to the world” and that all the countries of the bloc knew in advance the content of the statement that provoked the reaction of his Argentine counterpart, Alberto Fernández.
“All the countries knew that we were heading to make a statement specifically talking about flexibility and that we were going to emphasize that,” Lacalle Pou emphasized last night, speaking to the program From the Plain, led by Joaquín Morales Solá, in TN .
Lacalle Pou ratified that the position in favor of flexibility and the possibility of bilateral agreements of the countries of the bloc is a State policy of his country. And, therefore, he took away personal significance from his crossing with Fernández.
“I never fought with anyone, so it is impossible for me to reconcile with whom I did not fight,” he replied, when asked about his differences with his Argentine colleague.
Lacalle Pou also exhibited differences with the Fernández government, criticizing human rights violations in Venezuela. “If in Venezuela human rights were violated so many years ago, with the passage of time it only worsens,” he added.
During the interview, the president of Uruguay was emphatic about the need to open Mercosur to bilateral agreements, a position that Argentina opposes.
“If we allow the different countries to advance with other countries, that would not generate great traumas in the bloc, Mercosur is going to be strengthened, it is going to be nurtured, we must lose fear,” he said.
In the morning, Lacalle Pou had insisted on the same concepts that caused the difference with Alberto Fernández, when referring to the failed Mercosur summit. He did it when he left the oldest hospital in the country, which was the place that the computer system assigned him for the first dose against Covid-19.
After the interdict and the criticisms of Fernández, Lacalle Pou redoubled the bet on how the commercial process of the region should be: “We have a vocation for regional integration, Mercosur: we have a vocation for Mercosur to be a springboard and not a corset or a ballast”.
He also recalled that the summit could not have a final declaration, which had been negotiated by the diplomatic representatives, but that it could not be signed because “one of the countries did not agree to do so,” according to Lacalle Pou, out of disgust that Argentina did not accept to include in the text, Uruguay’s proposal on the need to “make Mercorsur more flexible”.
According to information that LA NACION was able to collect among the negotiators, there were various formulas managed to put that in writing, but Argentina did not agree to do so and the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, said that then it was preferable that there was no statement.
Lacalle, surrounded by local press media that covered the moment he went to receive the vaccine from Sinovac (China), gave arguments about his proposal: “We have a vocation that Mercosur, due to its own production, its own composition, geographical characteristics and human, it has a lot to give to the world ”. And he added: “That Uruguayans, Argentines, Paraguayans, Brazilians say: ‘We can be important in the world concert.”
The Uruguayan president complained about how closed the Southern Cone block is: “Today we are the fifth most protectionist region in the world, and we look and we have the Asian monsters generating more markets, consuming what is produced, not in Uruguay, in the region. So it seems logical that for the progress of our peoples, for there to be investment and work, we open ourselves to the world ”.
The president of Uruguay insisted on the need to open an internal negotiation so that those countries that want to be more protectionist do not limit those who want to make agreements with other markets without altering Mercosur ties: “What we cannot think is that because It is not convenient for a country to remain tied down, and that is what we are asking: that they loosen the cord a bit, that Mercosur be more flexible, that we can advance at different speeds, as was already discussed with South Korea ”.
“The relationships within the block have to be complementary,” he added. The proposal is not new and has been a request of governments throughout this century. Jorge Batlle (2000-2005) had claimed it in January 2003: “Mercosur is not a complete solution and it is necessary to go outside.” In September 2006, Tabaré Vázquez, president in two terms (2005-10 and 2015-20), asked to “re-promote external negotiation by making it more flexible through the incorporation of bilateralities, either in the framework of joint negotiations or allowing individual negotiations ”. He was out of luck.