The Senate of the Nation gave the green light this Thursday to the trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union. The vote obtained a large majority with 69 positive votes and 3 against hard Kirchnerism.
As happened in the Deputies, Peronism once again appeared divided on foreign trade. The extraordinary session continues because the modification of the glacier law is also on the agenda.
The Uruguayan Congress beat the Argentine Congress and managed to ratify the agreement before, so ours is in second place in the region. In the case of Paraguay, it is expected to ratify it next week, while in Brazil it has been approved by the Chamber of Deputies and now needs the approval of the Senate.
However, according to the ruling party, Argentina may come before Uruguay because what counts is the promulgation. Apparently, the neighboring country has “slower regulation,” they said.
The debate began at noon and had a tense exchange between the head of the “Popular” interblock Jose Mayans and the provisional president of the Chamber, Bartolome Abdala. The exchange of words occurred when the radical senator Maximiliano Abad He proposed to advance the vote on the agreement, which motivated Mayans to demand that the list of speakers be respected.
“You can’t do anything here,” the man from Formosa fired and added: “You can’t establish a list of speakers…I can vote here for you to lower your pants, and are you going to lower your pants if we vote by majority? Or stay naked there on the bench. I’m going to propose that you stay naked or put on a wig, like Milei.”
Mayans proposed that the ruling party be removed from the list of speakers, so the debate was shortened and the voting time was brought forward. Meanwhile, in the ruling party, the once again libertarian Francisco Paoltroni defended the text. In his speech he celebrated: “The day of the long-awaited moment for our country has arrived. After 25 years of treatment, today this European Union-Mercosur agreement will become law. This means the path to the development of our republic and the eternally postponed deep interior.”
For radicalism, Maximiliano Abad expressed: “This strategic association is a window of opportunities, it guarantees us competing, but not winning. For our country to take full advantage of it, we must strengthen our institutions and we must invest in infrastructure.”
Meanwhile, the senator Patricia Bullrich He highlighted that “this agreement with the European Union is the result of more than 40 years of a strategy that today will bring the country the best results in history. Trade increases freedom and that is our vision and our philosophy.”
“Being looked at again means re-entering an international community that relegated us because Argentina was insignificant. This treaty proposes a profound change, a direction for Argentina. This treaty tells us that trade with the world is a stage that had been closed and is reopening,” he added.
According to Bullrich, products such as meat, honey, prawns, citrus fruits, wines, honey, among other products, will be taxed zero. “This agreement shows substantial improvements in regional economies,” he stated while highlighting that the country’s provinces win.
As for the opposition, only Kirchnerist senators Juliana Di Tulio, Cristina López and Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro voted against. In the speeches, the senator of the Civic Front for Santiago, Gerardo Zamora, pointed out: “Even with the approval of this agreement, nothing will be achieved if a federal development policy is not achieved. The national government must work with each of the jurisdictions on the fundamental issues that are necessary for this treaty to meet the objective that we all want.”
The man from Santiago warned that “if we do not change course in this sense, strong asymmetries will continue to be generated that can lead to the reprimarization of the economy, and a treaty is of no use if it does not go hand in hand with the generation of added value and Argentine work.”
For its part, Jorge Capitanich He announced: “Our bloc will accompany the vote on this treaty with the European Union with observations due to the heterogeneity of impact that this means and, we also believe that this type of agreement requires accompanying complementary measures.”
At the close of the debate, Mayans warned that “this is not the panacea. This is not the treaty of history and even less so with this economic program where the industry is falling like Argentina. We are going to compete with the European industry under these conditions.”
“It helps that we vote for this, because we already lost the race against Uruguay,” the man from Formosa ironically said. “We are signing a treaty that if we lose by two seconds the race is useless,” he added.
Likewise, he indicated: “We are not going to oppose an agreement that there are many provinces that think can benefit them, but we must work hard to correct the asymmetries that we have not only with the European Union but with Brazil, because if not there will be supremacy of the European system.”
