| It’s been 25 years since the four Mercosur nations and the EU vowed to sign a free-trade agreement. Twenty-five years of political to-ing and fro-ing, now compounded with pro-environmental imperatives pushing negotiations to the brink of collapse. In hindsight, the trade talks resemble ‘Groundhog Day’ – a 1993 US movie where Phil Connors, a disheartened weatherman wanting to give his life some radical revamp, gets stuck in a time loop, condemned to relive the same day repeatedly. This differs little from the trajectory of the Mercosur negotiations, which has repeatedly seen the same arguments, blockages, advantages, and setbacks. In 1999, the European Commission and Mercosur countries – Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay – began talks on what was hailed as one of the biggest trade agreements in history. Covering 780 million people on both sides of the Atlantic and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of goods and services worth more than €120 billion annually, it would also see customs duties for EU companies lowered to the tune of €4 billion a year. Of course, such an agreement cannot be signed in a heartbeat. Negotiators met hundreds of times, and while there was some progress, the deal has been at a standstill for the past five years. | 
