Welcome to the Eurointelligence podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me are Susanna Muncheng and Jack Smith.

Today, we had a couple of stories in our news briefing about the EU's external relations or rather the lack of external relations.

One story about relations with the Mercosur, the countries from Latin America,

and another story about whether it makes sense for the EU to pursue its Green Deal adnosium

or whether it would actually be better for the EU to implement decarbonization policies in

third countries rather than at home. Jack, you wrote about Mercosur

this morning. Where are we there? I know that you said it's a case of too little too late. Is it that

bad or what will the Spanish president try to do and what will it try to, you know, what will it

actually achieve? I think that there are two things to discuss here. The first is the actual trade agreement between Mercosur and the EU,

which has been quite literally about a decade or so in the making.

And then there's how that fits in with the wider piece of engagement within the region.

As a bit of an aside to this, literally, this was almost 10 years ago now.

I was involved with editing a special

edition of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs on the agreement between the EU and

Mercosur. This was something that people were discussing at that point still, and we are still here

discussing it. There was an agreement in principle in 2019, but since then, neither Mercosur nor the EU have

actually ratified it.

Both sides have kind of seen 2023 as a bit of a window of opportunity year.

Of course, this follows Lula becoming president of Brazil again, which has to a certain extent

facilitated getting a move on with the deal.

But then the window kind of is seen as potentially closing next year because of the European Parliament elections.

So that will obviously bring in new parliament, potentially new commissioners, which will set the process back from the EU side of ratification.

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