📋 Looking at the fine print

Trade agreements are argued in tariff lines and decided in technical annexes. That is the premise behind a job that did not exist until now. The Asociación Mercosur de Normalización (AMN), which groups the national standards bodies of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, has appointed Mario Esper — president of the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards (ABNT) — as its first technical interlocutor with Europe's standards institutions: CEN, CENELEC and ETSI.

As the Mercosur-EU agreement moves toward implementation, the friction migrates from customs schedules to certification, sustainability criteria and the question of whose test results count. Most of what stops a Brazilian exporter is not a tariff. It is a technical requirement — a discipline at which, Esper says, the Europeans are world-class.

ABNT is a founding member of ISO and of AMN. Esper's first meeting with his European counterparts is set for October 5, and he will arrive with a deliberately modest opening position: begin with what both blocs already accept. He also has views on green protectionism, on France and on why the Chinese standard, not the European one, is the one arriving in Brazil.

This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.

Because most of the barriers are not tariffs. Creating non-tariff barriers through technical standards is a European specialty…

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