Mercosur

The Mercosur ( Mercosul in Portuguese, Mercosud in French) is the Economic community Pays of the South America, which literally means Common Market of the South (Mercado Común LED On in Spanish/Mercado Comum C Sul for its translation in Portuguese because they are both official languages MERCOSUR (Spanish for the Argentine, the Paraguay, the Uruguay, the Venezuela and the countries associated and Portuguese for the Brésil)).

History

Mercosur was born the March 26th 1991, with the signature of the treaty of Asunción. It is the third market integrated into the world after the European Union and ALENA.

Mercosur wants to be a tool for co-operation much more thorough than the ALENA (simple zone of free trade without common external tariff and will of political or legal bringing together). Its goals are freedom of movement of the goods, the services and the factors of production, the creation of a common external tariff, the bringing together of the economic policies and the harmonization of the legislations between the members.

Co-operation, even if progress could be noted in the development of the exchanges and in the will of a development of the democracy (disappearance of the military coups d'etat under penalty of possible exclusion of the MERCOSUR) always suffers from the relative poverty of the zone (even if it remains less low than in the remainder of the Latin America) and especially of the economic competition and policy between two the “Large ones” which are Brazil and Argentina.

The Declaration of Cuzco of December 8th, 2004 envisages its progressive integration in a political and economic union of all the South America, the South American Communauté of the nations (CSAN) which envisages a fusion of Mercosur with the Andean Communauté (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia) and the integration of the Chile, of the Guyana and the Suriname.

The 27e top of the December 17th 2004 with Ouro Preto, officializes the entry of three associated novel members: Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. At the time of this top, the Panama and the Mexico announced to plan to integrate Mercosur. Political dimension and social increasing was also underlined, with the need for directly forwarding the benefit of integration to the citizens. Permanent Member States:

Argentinian (1991)
(1991)
Paraguay (1991)
Uruguay (1991)
Venezuela (2006)

Countries associated with the Mercosur :

Bolivia (1996)
Chile (1996)
(2003)
Colombia (2004)
(2004)

Country having agreements of free trade with Mercosur:

India, January 25th 2004 agreement preferably customs on 800 products in the fields agricultural, chemical, pharmaceutical and automobile.
an interregional agreement of co-operation with the European Union was signed the December 15th 1995 and the two economic zones seek since to look further into this bringing together by a common zone of free trade.
Of the countries of Southern Africa (2004) (Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho).

At the time of the top of January 2007 in Rio, Bolivia and Ecuador expressed their interest to become full members. New adhesions could make slip the economic project towards an increasingly political unit. If the intrazone commercial exchanges passed in 16 years from 4 to 30 billion dollars, the small countries Uruguay and Paraguay less seem to have benefitted from it.

The top of June 29th, 2007 with Asuncion was made under the pressure avoid a dissolution of the organization following mécontenements of the various partners

Some figures drawn from the official site:

Population: 213,0 million
GDP: 1.175,5 billion dollars in 1998
Surface: 11.863.000 km ²

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

Official site of Mercosur
Comisec - Commission Sectorial
Map library on Mercosur

Random links:

John Ousterhout | Ernst Lehner | Al-Anon /Alateen | Length Beach StingRays | Suvi C (Žagubica)