Europeans want to make up for lost time and gain access to important raw materials in the race against the People’s Republic. But it comes to environmental issues.
Brussels/Vienna. The statistics speak for themselves: “Between 2011 and 2021, exports from Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay) to Europe dropped by more than 25%. The Chinese share in total exports, on the other hand, increased rapidly from 2% to 26% between 2000 and 2018”, calculates Lisandra Flach, from the Ifo Institute in Munich. Their conclusion: to “expand its supply chains and reduce dependence on China”, the European Union would have to ratify as soon as possible the trade agreement with the Mercosur Group that has been on the table since 2019.
The future of the pact with the South American economic bloc is just one of the issues to be discussed at the two-day EU-Latin America summit in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday. Europeans realized with a delay – admittedly a long one – that they were left behind in the geopolitical competition with China. It is not just about trade volumes, but access to vital raw materials such as lithium or copper, without which the shift to renewable energy sources and meeting climate targets cannot be achieved. And the countries of Central America, South America and the Caribbean that make up the CELAC Group would be attractive potential suppliers in this regard.