This was stated by the general director of the secretariat of the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining (MIEM, for its Spanish acronym), Fernanda Cardona, in relation to negotiations for the signing of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Mercosur and the European Union (EU).
She explained that in this case the chapter on telecommunications could not be excluded from negotiations, as was the case of the FTA between Uruguay and Chile, because it is a negotiation between blocks. "In the case of the negotiation with Chile, Uruguay transferred its interest and managed to exempt telecommunications, a situation that cannot be applied in the case of Mercosur-EU, because the interest of Uruguay is not shared by the rest of Mercosur," said Cardona. The official noted "the complexity of negotiating first between the region and then with the other bloc or region, in this case with the EU, so that Uruguay cannot always achieve its particular interests."