Dean's Lecture "Mercosur - European Union: Main Challenges"

"Mercosur - European Union: Main Challenges"

The EU-Mercosur agreement is the longest-negotiated trade deal in the European Union's history - more than a quarter of a century passed between the opening of talks in 1999 and the signing of the documents in Asunción on 17 January 2026. Since 1 May 2026 the trade pillar of the agreement has been applied provisionally, while the European Parliament has simultaneously referred to the Court of Justice of the EU the question of whether the deal may be implemented before full ratification by all member states. It is hard to imagine a better moment to discuss what this agreement actually means.

Prof. Furriela will present a cost-benefit assessment of the agreement - both for the countries of Latin America and for EU member states. His starting point will be the South American perspective, which is rarely heard in European public debate: how the agreement is viewed by governments, businesses and academic circles on the other side of the Atlantic, what hopes they attach to the opening of the EU market, and what adjustment costs they fear. The argument of the lecture is clear - this agreement delivers real benefits to both sides, even if those benefits are distributed unevenly over time and across sectors.

Topics to be addressed include:

• the origins and architecture of the EU-Mercosur agreement and the current state of the ratification process
• benefits and costs for the economies of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay
• implications for European agriculture and industry - where the facts end and the fears begin
• the legal and institutional dimension: EU competences, the role of the CJEU, investment protection mechanisms environmental and climate standards as the main line of contention
• the agreement's place in the wider geopolitical picture: the EU, Mercosur, China and the United States what the agreement means for academic cooperation and student exchange between Europe and South America.

The lecture will be delivered in English. Students, doctoral candidates, academic staff and everyone interested in international trade, regional integration and Europe's relations with Latin America are warmly invited.

Speaker's bio

Prof. Manuel Nabais da Furriela is Rector of the Catholic University of Brasília (Universidade Católica de Brasília), a position he has held since November 2025 as the twelfth rector in the institution's history of more than fifty years. He is a lawyer and academic specialising in international law and civil law.

He graduated in law from Faculdades Metropolitanas Unidas (FMU) in São Paulo, earned a Master in International Legal Studies from American University in Washington, D.C. (2001), and a master's degree in international law from the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo (USP, 2016). From 2018 to 2021 he served as Rector of Centro Universitário FMU, and subsequently (2021-2023) as its Academic Vice-President; he also headed the Law School at FMU and at Anhembi Morumbi University.

He gained international experience as in-house counsel at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington, D.C. He represented Brazil in the EU's Tuning project in the field of international relations, and has taught as a visiting professor at the universities of Angers (France), East London (United Kingdom) and Łódź (Poland).

Beyond academia, he is active in human rights advocacy - he is the founder of the Commission for Refugees, Asylum and International Protection at the Brazilian Bar Association in São Paulo (OAB/SP).