The Foreign Affairs Committee (CRE) held a public hearing this Thursday (23) with the director of the King's Brazil Institute, the English political scientist Anthony Pereira, reports “Agência Senado”. The King's Brazil Institute operates within the scope of the traditional King's College London, conducts research on Brazil and also promotes integration with researchers and students from our country.
Pereira highlighted that the United Kingdom is now going through a very important moment in its internal politics. This is because the voting process for the European Parliament began this Thursday, in which British voters and voters from 27 other nations that are part of the European Union (EU) will elect 751 deputies by Sunday, with representative benches that take into account, among other criteria, the size of each country's population.
Pereira hopes that the outcome of this process in the United Kingdom will shed light on a new consensus scenario for the country, after the difficult negotiation process aimed at leaving the EU. Decided after a referendum in 2016, the United Kingdom's exit from the EU was popularized as Brexit.
Brazil can win
For Pereira, Brazil could benefit from Brexit. This could happen due to the increase in exports of agricultural products to the United Kingdom and the signing of a trade agreement with Mercosur.
“It is quite possible that the UK’s trade relations will need to change after leaving the EU. Just to give one example, today a high percentage of food products imported by the country come from continental Europe. But these import quotas are not necessarily fixed. This British market could be opened to Brazilian producers, who are very efficient in agriculture. It is a window of opportunity that could open up. Great Britain has historically not been a fan of adopting agricultural barriers on a scale like that of some of its partners in the EU. We are more liberal,” he said.
Pereira also does not rule out that Brexit could lead to progress in negotiations for the United Kingdom and Mercosur to reach a trade agreement.
“I remember that in 2016, diplomat Roberto Jaguaribe, when he was president of Apex [Brazilian Export Promotion Agency] and was participating in an event in London, complained that the EU negotiations with Mercosur had been dragging on for almost 20 years. And he suggested an agreement between the United Kingdom and Mercosur, in which the negotiations would be significantly easier. I think that the barriers in this case would be much lower. I have no doubt that an EU-Mercosur agreement will never get off the ground,” he explained.
