South America’s Mercosur Pushes Trade Integration and the Long-Delayed EU Deal as Members Eye a Bigger Global Role
LUQUE, Paraguay, September 29 — South America’s Southern Common Market (Mercosur) is accelerating efforts to deepen regional integration and bring its landmark trade agreement with the European Union into force, using a foreign ministers’ meeting here on September 21 to prepare the ground for a summit of Mercosur and associated countries later this year.
The ministers focused on implementing new trade accords, chief among them the free-trade agreement with the EU that the bloc’s members signed in Asunción in January 2026 after more than two decades of negotiation. Brussels has approved a provisional mechanism to apply the trade deal while awaiting full ratification. The unresolved question is how members allocate export quotas under the agreement, especially for sensitive agricultural goods — a decisive issue for Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, the bloc’s core economies.
The gathering also reviewed progress on trade agreements with Singapore and Canada, widening the market footprint of a bloc founded in 1991 whose intra-bloc commerce has surged more than elevenfold, from roughly US$4.5 billion in 1991 to about US$51 billion by 2025, dominated by manufactured goods. Mercosur’s external trade reached US$438 billion in the first half of 2026, a 9% rise over the same period in 2025.
Diplomatic momentum is visible at the top. On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — who has made South American integration a hallmark of his foreign policy — met Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi to discuss regional integration, agricultural trade and infrastructure, including a planned binational bridge across the Jaguarão River. Paraguay handed the rotating presidency to Uruguay in June for the final six months of the year.
The strategic calculus is clear: as global trade fragments along geopolitical lines, Mercosur is betting that a more integrated single market — and a functioning EU pact — strengthens its negotiating hand with Washington, Beijing and other partners, even as members balance divergent economic priorities and the gravitational pull of forums like BRICS. Whether the quota disputes are settled in time for the summit remains the open question.