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☀ Domingo Brief — EU-Mercosur (At Last?)
Each Sunday, take two minutes to catch key stories and opportunities shaping Latin America.
Latinometrics
December 08, 2024 • Reading Time: 3 minutes
Welcome back to the Domingo Brief! This week, we’re following Costa Rica’s moment to shine, big port news in both Mexico and Peru, and more.
Trivia of the Week 🎯
Just over a quarter of you (27%) correctly answered that Alfredo Stroessner was the Latin American dictator which was never jailed following his country’s return to democracy. Stroessner, who ruled Paraguay for a record 35 years, was deposed in 1989 by his closest confidant. He fled to Brazil and lived there for the next seventeen years, n the process unfortunately never facing justice for the many crimes of his regime.
Each week, tune back in for the answer to the previous week’s trivia question. No cheating!
The famous Rio de Janeiro team Flamengo is based in which South Zone neighborhood of the city? |
🇦🇷🇧🇷🇵🇾🇺🇾 Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay welcomed Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, to their biannual Mercosur summit held in Montevideo. The four countries sat with the head of the European Union to try and hash out the terms of a controversial trade agreement which is a quarter-century in the making. If passed, the resulting free-trade area would become the world’s largest, featuring over 700M people across the European and South American continents.
Latinometrics: While all four Mercosur members appear ready and willing to ratify, the story is much more complicated for the 27-member European Union, which has been split on this issue for years now. Germany, Spain, and Portugal have all signaled their support (in addition to the European Commission, which has the exclusive rights to negotiate trade deals on behalf of the bloc). France is leading the opposition, joined by Poland and likely Austria and the Netherlands. Italy is the largest member country on the fence, and its support or opposition could make all the difference.
🇧🇷 Brazilian international tourism revenue topped $6B in the first ten months of this year, reflecting a 5.9% increase over the same time period last year. This surge has been driven by the high number of international tourist arrivals: a record 508K in October, which tops the previous record from October 2015 by over 15K. The country is on track to beat the record 6.6M tourists received in 2018 this year.
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