BUENOS AIRES (AP) — Uruguay and Argentina on Thursday became the first founding members of the Mercosur bloc of South American nations to ratify a long-sought free-trade agreement with the European Union to establish one of the world’s largest free-trade zones.
The deal has been negotiated for a quarter century among countries that are now home to more than 700 million people and account for a quarter of global gross domestic product. It passed Uruguay’s lower house with a landslide 91-2 vote, mirroring the Senate’s unanimous support the previous day.
“Uruguay has sent a strong message to the United States, Mercosur and Europe: that we have waited 25 years, but we are not willing to wait a single second longer,” Congressman Juan Martín Rodríguez said after the vote.
The Argentine Senate also ratified the agreement on Thursday with an overwhelming 69-3 vote and no abstentions, following a decisive approval by the Chamber of Deputies on Feb. 12. Though the ruling party pushed for a swift session to ensure Argentina became the first country to ratify the trade deal, deliberations lasted four hours.
Brazil and Paraguay — the other two founding members of Mercosur — are poised to approve the trade pact in the coming weeks.
The trans-Atlantic trade deal was signed on Jan. 17, marking the end of a 25-year deadlock by European agricultural concerns over unfair competition. But a few days later European lawmakers challenged the agreement in the bloc’s top court over concerns about the legality of the deal. A court decision could take months, but European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said earlier the EU would act once at least one Mercosur nation ratified the deal.
Once fully implemented, it will create a massive free trade area that von der Leyen has hailed as a powerful endorsement of multilateralism in what she called “the face of an increasingly hostile and transactional world.”
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