UK seeks ?deep, wide partnership' with Brazil
The new British ambassador, Peter Wilson, arrived in Brasília 26 days ago with a long list of missions: open trade negotiations between the United Kingdom and Mercosul, reduce or eliminate 50 barriers in Brazil that hinder bilateral trade (from English teas to Scotch whisky), close an agreement to avoid double taxation for companies present in both countries and pave the way for progress at the UN Climate Change Conference (CoP-26), to be hosted by Glasgow in November.
Faced with many fronts, Mr. Wilson sums up: "We want a broad and deep partnership with Brazil." The best way to do this, according to him, is to always pursue a "frank and honest" conversation among friends. And, reinforcing London's support for the country's entry into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), he starts by being sincere himself: the high rates of deforestation and doubts about anticorruption instruments are the main obstacles to the Brazilian candidacy.
The ambassador makes it clear that he sees no chance of the CoP-26 finalizing article 6 of the Paris Agreement Rulebook - on the negotiation of carbon credits - without an agreement with Brazil. He praises the new climate goal that the Brazilian government presented at the end of 2020, but in a subtle way says it is necessary to see the implementation of the commitment. "Brazil should not see this as an attack on the country, because it is not."
Legislation requiring British companies to buy products unrelated to deforestation is already in place, meeting consumer pressure. Global financial flows, he says, are moving to places with clear sustainable parameters and social and environmental policies. "That's because there is a real threat to the financial system if the climate continues to deteriorate the way it is."
At 52 years old, Mr. Wilson has served as a diplomat in Beijing and speaks Mandarin. He was the representative of the British delegation to the UN in New York and the UK ambassador to the Netherlands. In Brasília, he found a newly renovated diplomatic mission, with modern features, and locked himself up there for two weeks in quarantine, which he says he obeyed "strictly."
Read the main excerpts from the interview below:
Valor: After Brexit, what is the prospect of us having a Mercosur-UK trade agreement?
Peter Wilson: Bilateral trade has been growing, but not enough. So my initial proposition is to accelerate our exchange. For that, liberalization is key. There are many different ways to achieve this. Mercosur is one front, and we want to move forward with negotiations. Another front is to reduce or eliminate market access barriers. There are about 50 barriers today that we would like to see removed. One concrete example is scotch. We already supply Brazil, but we could be selling a lot more. [The embassy's commercial sector cited two other products that face barriers: teas and infusions, because some plants are banned in Brazil, and dairy products, because of highly costly inspections to British producers]. In...
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