The lack of consensus on the internal division of agricultural quotas in the trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union generated the first direct dispute between the countries of the South American bloc. Taking advantage of the transitional First-In, First-Out (Fifo) criterion, according to which the person who registers exports first meets the ceiling, Argentina and Uruguay fully exhausted the tariff-free quotas for products such as rice and eggs in the first month of the treaty’s validity, which began on May 1st.
The movement frustrated new requests for licenses from Brazilian exporters and exposed operational asymmetries in the launch of transatlantic free trade.
A servant at the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Uruguay, Valeria Csukasi detailed on her account on the social network X that the country captured 63% of this total volume, a feat also celebrated by the country’s president, Yamandú Orsi. The remainder of the rice quota was covered by Argentina.
In the egg segment, the Minister of Deregulation and Transformation of the State of Argentina, Federico Sturzenegger, reported that Argentine producers guaranteed 100% of the quota with tariff preference for the European market, in addition to a significant share in the honey market.
According to the minister, the performance was boosted by the agility of the new digital guide for the Argentine Single Foreign Trade Window (VUCE), launched on May 3rd.
