Spanish
The President of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, will travel on Friday to Brazil to attend the Mercosur Summit on Saturday, which will be held in Foz de Iguaçu, and reiterate there the "contribution" of his country to this bloc, to which it adhered a year ago as an associated State.
"We will discuss there the contribution that Panama makes to that group based on our privileged geographical, logistical and maritime position," stated the Head of State during his weekly press conference.
Mulino signed on December 6, 2024, in Montevideo, Uruguay, the protocols for Panama to begin the process of joining as an Associated State to the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), which has Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay as full members, while Bolivia is in the process of achieving that status.
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The other Associated States of Mercosur are Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, and Suriname. The Panamanian Parliament approved the law ratifying the Economic Complementarity Agreement between Panama and Mercosur, which was already endorsed by Mulino. The president detailed this Thursday that he will take to the Foz de Iguazú Summit "the concrete evidence, the official gazette" by which Panama joins "through a law, this Mercosur integration program". "It's the first time Panama looks South, and I have done it because there is a future there, there is a market and above all they will need our geographical position to continue exporting to the whole world," said Mulino, after again ruling out that this move could negatively affect Panamanian production. Mercosur "does not represent, nor will it represent, a threat to national production (...) we look towards the South with optimism, with much hope of strengthening ties with those governments (...) democratic governments, that respect democracy, (to) be able to continue advancing in the regional integration project," he added. In this Summit, the focus is on the possible signing of a trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union, which has been negotiated for over 20 years and now faces strong opposition from France and recent doubts from Italy, given the impatience of the Southern bloc.
