Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies approved the Mercosur-European Union (EU) trade agreement with 203 votes in favor, 42 against and four abstentions, becoming the first country to take this decisive step.
Argentina thus became the first country in Mercosur, a bloc also formed by Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, to obtain the first legislative approval of the long-awaited trade agreement with the EU.
Despite ideological differences between the governments of the countries that form Mercosur, they all unreservedly defend this trade agreement, which was negotiated for more than 25 years, and all respective leaders made a commitment to ratify it.
This is despite the European Parliament having sent the agreement to be analyzed by the EU Court of Justice, to certify compliance with European legislation.
The pact was signed on January 17 in Paraguay’s capital, Asunción, creating an integrated economic space of more than 700 million people, which represents around 30% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and around 35% of global trade, according to EU data.
Although the presidents of the four Mercosur countries sent the project to their respective parliaments in search of rapid ratification, the Argentinean was the fastest.
This is because Javier Milei decided to include it on the agenda of the extraordinary sessions in February, before the ordinary legislative period, which officially begins on March 1st, after the summer holidays in the southern hemisphere of the planet.
Milei delivered the project to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of parliament, on February 6, where he argued that “the agreement presents numerous benefits” for Argentina.
A few days before Milei, on February 2, the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, also forwarded the Mercosur-EU agreement to Congress to begin the ratification process on the first day of the 2026 legislative sessions, a gesture with which he also seeks to speed up the process.
Lula wants it to be a quick process because, he argued, the Mercosur-EU agreement opens “a new cycle of opportunities” for Brazilian companies, by strengthening the country’s competitiveness, expanding exports and attracting investments in a sustainable way.
The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Hugo Motta, promised to speed up the process and said that the vote in the lower house will take place in the “week after Carnival”, that is, in the last week of February, before being forwarded to the Senate, the upper house.
The Government of Uruguay delivered the agreement to parliament on February 10, being the last of the South American bloc countries to do so, but hopes that the discussion will be concluded in February and be the first to ratify it.
The debate is expected to begin on Tuesday, when it will be defended by representatives from different ministries and delegations from the productive and labor sectors.
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