The international order cannot be rebuilt by Europe alone, Brazil’s EU Ambassador Pedro Miguel da Costa e Silva has told Europe Today, after Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney suggested Europe should lead efforts to restore the multilateral system.
Instead, he argued all countries will have to participate in an increasingly multipolar world.
“If we’re going to rebuild something, it has to be rebuilt by everybody. Europe will have an important place at the table, but you’ll need to have all other voices speaking,” Ambassador da Costa e Silva said.
“Europe has a place, but I’m not convinced that (the world order) will be rebuilt from here. It has to be built from all different places,” he added.
His remarks follow Brazil’s foreign policy calling for a bigger role for Latin American and the Global South in international relations, pursued by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he believed the international order will “be rebuilt out of Europe”, pointedly suggesting that the era of US leadership of the free world was coming to an end.
Ambassador da Costa e Silva also hailed the trade deal between the EU and the Mercosur bloc, which provisionally took effect last Friday, as a victory for multilateralism in a more unstable world.
“I think that for countries like mine, rules are fundamental,” he said. “We helped build them together with European countries and with the United States, and we’re going to stand by them because rules are fundamental to organised international life.”
The contentious agreement, the product of 25 years of stop-start negotiations between the EU and Mercosur – which comprises Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay -, was sealed in January after years of bitter political opposition driven by European farming communities.
The European Parliament has referred the agreement to the EU’s top court, a move that significantly delays the deal and could potentially derail its final approval.
Da Costa e Silva expressed confidence the court will rule that it is “perfectly in line with the legal agreements of the EU.”
Concern has mounted in recent weeks over the possible concentration of quotas allocated to products such as South American beef, with members of the European Parliament claiming that Mercosur agricultural heavyweights could dominate access to the quotas.
The ambassador warned against the spread of “disinformation” and assured that “quotas are managed by both sides.”
“I would say that the deal was built on multilateralism, on the idea of cooperation, on the ideal of dialogue of working together,” he added. “So, it’s a very strong signal about what the Mercosur countries and Europe stand for.”