President Javier Milei stated that Mercosur “needs an institutional and comprehensive reform” and maintained: “Flexibility is an asset, not a threat.” During his speech at the summit held in the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguaçu, Milei thanked Brazil for the reception, greeted his peers Santiago Peña (Paraguay), Yamandú Orsi (Uruguay), and José Raúl Mulino (Panama), while again congratulating the Chilean people for the “exemplary process” that resulted in the election of José Antonio Kast as president, whom he defined as “my great friend.” “The new South America comes from the future. It is up to this bloc to decide whether it will move with this tailwind or cling to the mast of the past to fight against the change that our countries need and demand,” the head of state began. Accompanied by Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno, Milei reproached that “there is no common market, no effective free circulation, no macroeconomic coordination,” as well as “sufficient openness to the world,” considering that Mercosur has not fulfilled any of the objectives for the region. In this sense, he emphasized: “There is an oversized and inefficient bureaucracy that has expanded upon itself. Reality is not discussed, it is measured.” Milei advocated for “an institutional and comprehensive reform,” which must “reduce the economic cost” of the bloc and stated: “Integration must serve free trade, not bureaucracy.” Furthermore, he sentenced: “flexibility is an asset, not a threat,” so “rigidity can only bring stagnation”: “It is a concrete tool to adapt to an international environment that evolves much faster than our collective response.” According to the president, when Mercosur “tries to advance in a monolithic way, opportunities are lost” and cited the example of the free trade agreement with the European Union (EU) which was postponed until January. “After decades of negotiations, we could not materialize a trade agreement. The time that has passed does not respond to the need of our nations,” Milei recorded. Milei emphasized the fight against problems such as insecurity, organized crime, and drug trafficking, referring to the case of Venezuela, which is suspended from Mercosur, and classified Nicolás Maduro as a narco-terrorist. “Argentina greets the pressure from the United States and Donald Trump to free the Venezuelan people,” expressed the libertarian, who again demanded the release of the Argentine gendarme Nahuel Galloy and congratulated opposition leader María Corina Machado for obtaining the Nobel Peace Prize. Likewise, he highlighted the incorporation of the Plurinational State of Bolivia into Mercosur and thanked for the support for the claim of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.
