Montevideo Portal
Former Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa considered the fact that China seeks to advance in a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with all of Mercosur and not bilaterally as it promoted as “totally foreseeable”, and said that “no one can be surprised”. the government of Luis Lacalle Pou.
“This is news that cannot surprise anyone. Indeed, both in the past administration and at the beginning of this one, attempts were made for a trade agreement with China, and China always said that it preferred to do it with all of Mercosur,” said Nin Novoa, who served as foreign minister from 2015 to and 2020, during the second administration of Tabaré Vázquez, to Montevideo Portal.
“When our government ends and the current one takes office, we told them that China wanted all of Mercosur. And well, they talked about mutual interest, about the pre-agreements they had, about the feasibility, about all that that no one ever saw, that they never made known, and now they come up with this that is not new. That it was foreseeable”, insisted the former foreign minister.
“The feasibility study may have said that it is feasible, nothing more… But they don’t want to do it only with Uruguay, they want to do it with all of Mercosur,” he added.
Foreign Minister Francisco Bustillo traveled to China in mid-April, where the authorities of the Asian giant told him that the FTA must be carried out in “harmony and in tune” with the other Mercosur partners, according to the weekly Search.
In the Executive Branch they also take it as a fact that the agreement will not be finalized before 2025. Government sources told Montevideo Portal that now “the ball was on China’s side”, but “it is clear that this changes the energy” of the Uruguayan Executive.
Bustillo met in China with Vice President Han Zheng, Foreign Minister Qin Gang and the institutional representative of Commerce in China, Wang Shouwen.
Nin Novoa recalled that in 2015 he visited China after speaking with all the foreign ministers of the bloc, and that in 2016 the then president Tabaré Vázquez traveled, when Uruguay presented the terms of reference on which he wanted to talk.
The former foreign minister remarked once again that China “always said” to make the agreement “with Mercosur, because they did not want to create a problem.”
“Later we continued the negotiations and they always told us: we prefer that they come with all of Mercosur. So we changed the strategy and began to make other types of agreements, within the framework of a commercial relationship that was increasing, such as sanitary and phytosanitary protocols, customs regulations, we adhered to the silk route. We did many things”, stated Nin Novoa.
Montevideo Portal
2023-05-03 03:31:48
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