In addition to his participation in the sessions of the regional forum, the president will hold a meeting with Spanish leader Pedro Sánchez and Joseph Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, to direct a negotiation to relaunch the Mercosur-European Union agreement.
Alberto Fernández adjusted until dawn the seven-minute speech he will deliver today during the first session of the Ibero-American Summit, a multilateral forum organized by Spain to preserve its geopolitical influence in the region. The president will propose a reform of the international financial system to placate the economic and social effects that climate change and the war in Ukraine cause in Latin America.
Before his official participation in the summit, Alberto Fernández will meet with Pedro Sánchez – head of the Spanish Government – and Joseph Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, to find a political solution that allows the exhumation of the Mercosur-European Union (EU) agreement.
Europe launched a green pact that establishes a set of rules that complicate exports from Mercosur countries – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay – to the old continent. Those rules aimed at compliance with the Paris Agreement were transformed into unexpected trade barriers to products exported from Mercosur to the EU.
An example: soybean biodiesel before the negotiation of the Mercosur-EU agreement was taxed at six percent of net exports. And after the treaty announced during Macri’s government, that tribute was reduced to zero. But now – as a result of the Green Deal – soy biodiesel can no longer enter Europe.
Alberto Fernández will propose to Sánchez and Borrell that the economic influence of the Green Deal be reviewed and that annexed reforms be arbitrated that allow the spirit of the trade agreement between blocks that was approved in July 2019 to be recovered. Without these reforms, the Mercosur-European Union agreement will be buried forever.
Alberto Fernández believes that the global agenda is crossed by the economic and financial effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and Climate Change, and that the succession and concurrence of these three global factors deepen the asymmetry between rich nations and poor or middle-income countries.
In this context, the head of state organized the meeting with Sánchez and Borrell and drafted the speech he will deliver today at the opening of the Ibero-American Summit. When it was dawn in Santo Domingo, together with Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero, Alberto Fernández took refuge in his suite at the Ambassador Hotel to adjust the details of his presentation to the regional forum.
The presidential speech synthesizes the presentations of Cafiero and Sergio Massa at the G20 Summit in India. The foreign minister explained in Delhi that climate change no longer means only preserving nature, but also that it is necessary to find an economic and financial solution to the damage it causes among emerging countries.
And in the same line of argument, the Minister of Economy said in Bengaluru that climate change caused a historic drought in Argentina that implied a loss of 15,000 million dollars in exports. This economic damage was the thesis that Massa used to get the IMF to modify the Central Bank’s reserve target for 2023.
From this perspective, Alberto Fernández will propose in the regional forum that it is essential to reformulate the architecture of the financial system to contain the economic consequences of climate change, after COVID-19 and the status quo situation exhibited by the war in Ukraine.
“There has already been an IMF response to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and a new response to climate change is now needed. We see it with the drought, and that is what the president is going to propose during his speech at the Summit,” Cafiero said.
Alberto Fernández’s multilateral agenda is focused on this strategic approach and has no intention of running a millimeter from the road map designed for Santo Domingo. During the official dinner of the Summit he crossed paths with Guillermo Lasso, president of Ecuador, and shook his hand coldly and without comment.
The head of state opted for a tactical truce to avoid a new diplomatic escalation as a result of the escape of former minister María de los Ángeles Duarte. Only if Lasso brings the issue to the summit will Alberto Fernández answer symmetrically.
Meanwhile, the president waits for news to come from Washington. The White House must officially confirm its conclave with Joseph Biden, and that was happening this afternoon. (https://www.infobae.com/politica/2023/03/25/cumbre-iberoamericana-alberto-fernandez-exigira-la-reforma-del-sistema-financiero-para-enfrentar-la-crisis-global-causada-por-el-cambio-climatico/)
