The Government presented its proposal to open the bloc to the Mercosur foreign ministers.

After the warnings from President Javier Milei about the possibility of leaving Mercosur if he wasn't allowed to advance in a free trade agreement with United States, the international context finds the foreign ministers of the South American bloc meeting this Friday in Buenos Aires to discuss their internal situation.

"The Foreign Ministers reaffirmed the commitment to the strengthening and unity of Mercosur and the determination to modernize and explore, in a coordinated manner, how to better take advantage of the circumstances of a changing and challenging international situation," a joint statement noted at the end of the meeting.

Argentina had already proposed weeks ago, during a coordinators' meeting, to relaunch the initiative presented last year by Milei's Foreign Ministry: to relax the bloc's rules to allow member countries to negotiate trade agreements individually with third parties, something currently limited by the founding treaties of 1991 and especially by the regulations in force since the year 2000.

This Friday, Argentine Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein, in his role as host, and Ambassador Luis Kreckler, as commercial reference and national coordinator, presented a scheme of greater transparency, which contemplates the possibility of initiating exploratory negotiations by informing the other bloc partners.

From Milei's Government, they assure they bring a "firm proposal for the first time," and highlight that Brazil shows a greater openness, despite the lack of dialogue between Javier Milei and the communist Lula da Silva, or with the new Uruguayan president, the socialist Yamandú Orsi.

So far, Milei keeps ties only with the leader Santiago Peña, whom he visited in Paraguay on Thursday. Argentina holds the pro tempore presidency of Mercosur until July, at which time it must convene a summit of the bloc's heads of state in Buenos Aires.

From 11 a.m., at the Palacio San Martín, Gerardo Werthein was meeting with Mauro Vieira, from Brazil; Mario Lubetkin, for Uruguay; Rubén Ramírez, from Paraguay; and Celinda Sosa Lunda, from Bolivia.

"We are going to talk about the current situation, we are going to see how we move forward from here. We have good possibilities of achieving convenient agreements for Argentina and the bloc," Werthein expressed to some journalists before entering the meeting.

Meanwhile, President Javier Milei is promoting a modification in national regulations to align with the principle of tariff reciprocity promoted by Donald Trump, who applied a 10% surcharge on Argentine, Brazilian, Colombian, and other countries' products from the continent.