Spanish
Buenos Aires, July 3 (EFE).- Argentine President Javier Milei urged this Thursday at the Mercosur presidents' summit to continue the path of trade opening promoted during his presidency and affirmed that the bloc should not be thought of as a "shield that protects it from the world", but as "a spear" that allows it to penetrate global markets.
"We must stop thinking of Mercosur as a shield that protects us from the world and start thinking of it as a spear that allows us to effectively penetrate global markets, markets from which customs barriers have excluded us until now," said the Argentine president at the opening of the summit in Buenos Aires, where he will hand over the presidency of the bloc to Brazil.
The president questioned the "destructive inertia" that, according to him, characterized Mercosur for years and emphasized that his intention during the Argentine presidency in the first half of this year was to move "towards a much freer commercial and regulatory scheme", replacing the "iron curtain" to which, he considered, the member countries are subjected.
"We dedicate the exercise of our first pro tempore presidency to translating the proposed path into tangible and achievable measures," he mentioned, highlighting the end of negotiations for an agreement with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and the progress in the dialogue with the United Arab Emirates.
Milei highlighted the "relaunch of the relationship with the European Union" and expressed his conviction that the agreement between both blocs represents "a historic opportunity to consolidate a strategic partnership" based on the complementarity of their economies.
"We want our pro tempore presidency to be considered a sincere exercise in Mercosur adopting, as a bloc, the pro-free trade reforms it needs. And that is why we hope, with the same sincerity, that the next presidency will accompany the measures we have taken this semester," he added.
Although he celebrated the cooperation between the members, he also warned that, if progress towards greater trade openness is not maintained, Argentina will insist on relaxing the conditions of the bloc.
"It is up to our Mercosur partners to decide if they want to help us embark on the path we have chosen, because our task is none other than to seek prosperity for our peoples. And from history we learned that it is only found through free trade," he concluded.
