Spain will try to persuade reluctant EU partners to approve Mercosur deal

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Wednesday said some European Union partners were reluctant to approve a trade agreement with South American bloc Mercosur, but he would try to persuade them to greenlight the deal.

The bloc comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay Brazil is discussing concluding the agreement with the European Union after a political deal hammered out in 2019 was put on hold due to concerns, particularly in France, about Amazon deforestation and Brazil's commitment to climate change action.

"There are indeed countries within the EU that have doubts about the culmination of this important agreement, but I believe that these doubts should be dispelled if we think of all the potential in an agreement of this magnitude," Sanchez told a joint news conference with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

"If there are arguments (for ratification) and if there is an opportunity, it is clearly now," he added.

Marcio Elias Rosa, a top secretary at Brazil's development and industry ministry, said on Sunday that he expected the ongoing trade negotiations to conclude this year.

Lula has said climate change has the highest profile in his government and he is prioritising efforts to fight deforestation in the Amazon rainforest as he tries to undo the environmental destruction wreaked under far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro.

(Reporting by Belén Carreño and Emma Pinedo; Writing by David Latona; Editing by Andrei Khalip)