Maria Laura Avignolo
02/05/2021 15:07
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 02/05/2021 15:09
President Alberto Fernández held the fourth conversation with his French colleague Emmanuel Macron on Friday.
This time it was by video: shortly after Buenos Aires noon this Friday they communicated, at the request of the Argentine head of state.
The
International Monetary Fund
,
Covid
, Mercosur and the environment were the topics of discussion.
With France on the IMF board, Fernández
sought Macron's support
in the negotiations, as he had done before with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
It is a way of weighing the opinion of governments over that of the agency's technical teams in Washington and even the representatives of the respective countries.
Fernández's project is to
call all the G7 leaders
in search of support for the Argentine negotiations with the Fund.
Argentina also needs to pay maturities of its debt with the
Paris Club
at the end of June, after receiving a year and a half of grace and at a lower rate, the value of which is unknown until now, to comply with this obligation.
The payment is
2.1 billion dollars
, and it cannot be re-discussed if there is no final negotiation with the IMF.
Fernández and Macron have achieved a cordial relationship since their meeting at the Eliseo Palace a year ago, when the Argentine head of state received a guitar as a gift and rehearsed some chords in front of a fun French colleague.
Argentina is exercising
the presidency of Mercosur
and that is why the relationship with the European Union was another of the issues that were discussed.
France rejected an agreement between the two blocks, as it is proposed.
Paris believes that there must be modifications in the environmental agreements, which require efforts from Brazil but ultimately also affect Argentina.
French Foreign Trade Minister
Franck Riester
declared on Thursday that his country will not sign the trade liberalization agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur countries "under current conditions."
During a meeting of the trade policy monitoring committee that brought together officials, NGOs, trade unions, businessmen and other representatives of the private sector, the minister confirmed that he "expects tangible and objective guarantees from the four MERCOSUR member countries" in this matter. of environmental protection and sanitary norms ".
Riester added: "
We are not proposing a definitive withdrawal
. But neither will we settle for a political declaration on environmental commitments from the four countries involved. It is a matter that will take time. We do not want this agreement, which in particular allows more exports of meat and agricultural products from Mercosur to the EU, leads to more deforestation, but rather the opposite. Our demands are clear, we must work on the substance to make them as 'objective' as possible and thus be able to advance in the agreement ".
France wants limitations on the exploitation of soybeans to avoid deforestation in the Amazon.
The interview with the French president began to be managed a week ago, at a time when
France is very compromised by the Covid epidemic
, with the arrival of new variants of the virus and the lack of vaccines in the midst of the pandemic.
But the Eliseo palace quickly agreed to the Argentine request.
