EU Trade Talks with Mexico, Mercosur Press Onward

Negotiations to clinch a trade deal and association agreement between the EU and Mercosur are slated to be extended further, though officials say they hope an agreement in principle can be wrapped up in the short term. Separate talks to update a decades-old trade deal between the EU and Mexico have also been prolonged, with another round planned within weeks. Delegations from the EU and Mercosur, the Latin American trade bloc composed of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, concluded two weeks of talks in Brussels in early February, and met again in Asunción for another series of negotiations which ended last week. A pact between the European group and the four South American countries has been long in the making, with negotiations beginning 19 years ago and recently resuming in 2016. Reports suggest that the two sides are continuing to haggle over market access for key agricultural goods, such as beef, as well as major manufacturing outputs such as automobiles and their component parts. Since the end of the Brussels exchange in February, several reports have claimed that the EU offered to increase beef quota from 77,000 tonnes to 99,000 tonnes. That number has been deemed by Mercosur members to...