Today EU and Mercosur countries – Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay & Uruguay – finalised negotiations for a groundbreaking EU-Mercosur partnership agreement.

This landmark deal will:

👉🏻 Secure and diversify our supply chains.
Create new opportunities for all kind of businesses, by removing often prohibitive tariffs on EU exports to Mercosur.
👉🏻 Save EU businesses €4 billion worth of duties per year.
👉🏻 Ensure trade preferences in strategic net zero industry sectors such as renewable energy technologies, and low-carbon fuels.
👉🏻 Help small and medium enterprises export more by cutting red tape.
👉🏻 Secure an efficient, reliable and sustainable flow of raw materials critical for the global green transition.
👉🏻 An enhanced commitment on sustainability

This deal takes the EU-Mercosur sustainability commitments to the next level through:

✅ Making the Paris Agreement an essential element of the EU-Mercosur relationship.
✅ Concrete commitments to halt deforestation.
Clear and enforceable commitments on sustainable development, including on labour rights and sustainable management and conservation of forests.
✅ An active role for civil society organisations to overview the implementation of the agreement, including human rights or environmental concerns.
✅ Moreover, €1.8 billion in EU support will facilitate the fair green and digital transition in Mercosur countries, as part of the Global Gateway.

”This is a win-win agreement, which will bring meaningful benefits to consumers and businesses, on both sides”

Ursula van der Leyen

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “This is a win-win agreement, which will bring meaningful benefits to consumers and businesses, on both sides. We are focused on fairness and mutual benefit. We have listened to the concerns of our farmers and we acted on them. This agreement includes robust safeguards to protect your livelihoods. EU-Mercosur is the biggest agreement ever, when it comes to the protection of EU food and drinks products. More than 350 EU products now are protected by a geographical indication. In addition, our European health and food standards remain untouchable. Mercosur exporters will have to comply strictly with these standards to access the EU market. This is the reality of an agreement that will save EU companies €4 billion worth of export duties per year.”

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen signed the agreement for the European Union and her counterparts signing for Mercosur were Brazilian President Lula, Argentinian President Milei, Paraguayan President Peña, and Uruguayan President Lacalle Pou.

Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dukEWptu

I love London, a magnificant city. I truly enjoy just walking around taking it in.

After a long day with many meetings there is nothing better than walking the streets of London.

Passing outside Whitehall in Westminister, lately I have been anlot in the buildings for various worl related reasons, on my late evening 12KM walk is a pleasure. And Big Ben is standing tall as always.

Great ICC event in London yesterday, ’Re-imagining the Future of Trade’ at Clifford Chance with more than 400 registered participants.

Lord Karan Bilimoria of Chelsea delivered an inspirational Key Note Speech.

Chris Southworth moderated in an excellent way a panel where we had an dyanamic & constructive discussion about how to accelerate trade digitalization.

Great dialogue with superspeakers like Ayesha Ali Oswald Kuyler Vashti Maharaj & Rebecca Shepherd.

I made the points that:

🎯 We need to look at international trade not in silos but as a connected and interoperable ecosystem, where we instead of digitizing all paper documents from the legacy trade processes – use the datapipeline to foster intelligent data packages, trust badges, a digital passport for goods

🎯 We also need to evolve borders to digital smart border for more inclusive and fair smarter trade, maling it possible for all businesses, including MSMEs to grow, driving prosperity, and that…

🎯 Trade faciliation will release the values that will drive accelerated digitalization, as argued by the #TradeFacilitationCommission in a recent report, see below.

This execvelnt event was also the launch of the International Center for Digital Trade and Innovation (#iC4DTI) and the ’2024 Roadmap to Digitalise UK Trade’.

A most needed & timely initiative. Tale a look at the national roadmap – it is excellent. https://c4dti.uk/