MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Friday, July 3rd 2026 - 07:58 UTC
Mercosur's 68th Presidential Summit in Asunción issued a Special Declaration reiterating their support for Argentina's “legitimate rights” in the sovereignty dispute over the Falklands
Within the span of a week, the two opposing positions in the Falklands dispute were laid out clearly in two separate arenas: South American governments' backing for Argentina's sovereignty claim, and the defense of self-determination that two representatives of the Islanders took to the United Nations. Neither pronouncement was a reply to the other, but together they illustrate the distance between two hard-to-reconcile logics.
The more recent came on June 30, at the close of Mercosur's 68th Presidential Summit in Asunción, when the bloc's member and associated states issued a Special Declaration reiterating their support for Argentina's “legitimate rights” in the sovereignty dispute over the Falklands, South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands and the surrounding maritime areas. The text —signed by the presidents of Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay, and by Argentine Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno, in the absence of President Javier Milei— questioned British economic activities in the disputed area and tasked Uruguay, as pro tempore president, with a fresh approach to the UN to resume bilateral negotiations. The statement was not a novelty but the ratification of a position the bloc has reiterated at every summit since the 1996 Declaration of Potrero de los Funes.
