Germany calls for signing new trade alliances and urges ratification of the EU-Mercosur

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called on Thursday for Europe to sign new trade alliances to strengthen competitiveness and to ratify the agreement between the European Union (EU) and Mercosur before the end of the year. "Every new agreement strengthens Europe's competitiveness and therefore we must close new agreements quickly and, above all, as the EU alone, that is, purely European agreements, with a purely European application then also in the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council," said Merz before the Bundestag, the Lower House of the German Parliament, during a government statement on the occasion of the European summit next week. He recalled that in recent months, "after long negotiations, important advances were made," such as the agreement with Mercosur, with Mexico and, most recently, with Indonesia, which have already been concluded. He added that Mercosur alone creates a free trade area with more than 700 million people and a savings in tariffs for ...