Brazil's President Luiz Lula da Silva announced on Sunday in Johannesburg at the end of the G20 leaders' meeting that the agreement between Mercosur and the European Union (EU) will be signed on December 20th in Brasilia. This deal, which took 25 years to negotiate and was reached in December 2024, will not be signed during the expected Mercosur summit in Foz do Iguaçu. This meeting could be postponed due to scheduling issues for some presidents (the Argentine Foreign Ministry had already announced that Javier Milei would not attend, and Santiago Peña of Paraguay would also not be part of it). Therefore, Lula suggested that the signing will take place at a special meeting in the Brazilian capital: "I will do it in Brasilia because, possibly, we will have a problem with Paraguay... we will sign on December 20th," the president concluded. "It is a very special moment for Mercosur and for the European Union. It will possibly be the largest trade agreement in the world," Lula declared, as reported by the newspaper Folha de San Paulo, according to the Argentine News Agency. Lula emphasized that the signing will take place despite the strong opposition shown by the government of Emmanuel Macron in France, which failed to articulate a blocking minority within the EU. The French Foreign Minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, had attempted to negotiate a "robust safeguard clause" with his Argentine counterpart, Pablo Quirno, within the G20 framework, to get Paris's "yes." However, Lula was categorical in distancing the negotiations from France: "I am not negotiating with France. I guarantee you that on December 20th I will sign the agreement between the European Union and Mercosur. If it materializes, the pact would form one of the main markets in the world, with a combined population of 780 million people."
