🏛️ MARATHON SESSION IN THE SENATE

Special Coverage · February 26, 2026 · Chamber of Senators of the Argentine Nation

📅  BUENOS AIRES, FEBRUARY 26, 2026 |  NATIONAL POLICY

The Senate approves the Mercosur-EU agreement and stresses to the end with the Glacier Law on a historic day of high political voltage

With 40 senators in the chamber since 11 a.m., the ruling party consummated its penultimate extraordinary session with an explosive agenda: the ratification of the most ambitious trade agreement in the history of Mercosur and the controversial reform of the law that protects glaciers, a debate that divided blocs and revived the rift between extractive development and environmental protection.

⚡  THE QUORUM, THE BUZZER AND THE START

The session was scheduled for 11 a.m. on Thursday, February 26 and started twelve minutes later than announced, but without the nervousness that characterized other days of this administration. With La Libertad Avanza, its allies and the surprise of the Justicialist bloc – which sat on their benches while the buzzer sounded – the quorum was achieved without any surprises. At the head of the venue, Vice President Victoria Villarruel presided over the session.

The day began with the approval of the list of Fernando Iglesias, former national deputy of La Libertad Avanza, as Argentine political ambassador to Belgium and the European Union. The appointment is interpreted as a strategic move by the Executive: Iglesias will take office in Brussels at the time of greatest activity linked to the Mercosur-EU agreement, and the Senate had to formally endorse his appointment.

🌍  MERCOSUR-EU AGREEMENT: 25 YEARS OF NEGOTIATIONS REACH THE FLOOR

The treaty between Mercosur and the European Union has such a long history that it is already part of the political culture of the region. Negotiations formally began in 1999, were interrupted multiple times due to tariff differences and pressure from European agro-industrial lobbies, and finally reached their political closure in December 2019. However, the final signing only took place on January 17, 2026 in Asunción, with the presence of the presidents of Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay – Brazil participated but President Lula da Silva did not attend in person – and the European Commission's Commissioner for Trade.

The Chamber of Deputies had already given it half sanction on February 12. The urgency of the Senate, which brought forward the debate to this Thursday from the originally scheduled Friday, had a specific reason: the Uruguayan Parliament was moving quickly in its own ratification process and the Argentine government wanted to become the first country in the bloc to endorse the agreement, ensuring a differential advantage in access to trade quotas.

The text of the agreement cannot be modified: the Senate had to approve or reject it en bloc. There are no half measures. That simplified the debate on this point: opposition to the treaty existed, but it was marginal in the face of a broad and transversal parliamentary consensus. PRO Senator Martin Goerling described it as a historic event, while the president of the UCR bloc, Eduardo Vischi, said that the agreement exceeds trade and includes long-term political commitments.

📊  WHAT ARGENTINA GAINS: THE TARIFF MAP

The projected economic impact is of great magnitude. Argentine exports to the EU could grow by 76% in the first five years of the agreement's validity, going from the current 8,600 million dollars to more than 15,000 million. In a ten-year horizon, the projection rises to 122%. The EU will eliminate tariffs for 92% of Mercosur's exports and grant preferential access to another 7.5%, leaving out only 0.5%.

Source: Argentine Foreign Ministry / INAI Foundation / Infobae, February 2026

The wine sector also obtained historic recognition: the EU endorsed 96 geographical indications and traditional Argentine expressions such as 'reserva' and 'gran reserva', a claim that national winemakers had been demanding for more than two decades in each round of negotiations. Chambers such as the UIA, the SRA and the G6 celebrated the agreement, although the manufacturing industry warned that the opening of imports from Europe – gradual over 10 and 15 years – will require competitiveness adjustments.

🏔️  THE GLACIER LAW: THE DEBATE THAT DIVIDED EVERYTHING

If the Mercosur-EU agreement was the main course of the ruling party, the reform of the Glacier Law was the minefield. The current law, Law 26,639, was sanctioned in 2010 under the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and protects both visible glaciers and periglacial areas, that is, high mountain ecosystems with frozen or water-saturated soils that fulfill a critical water function. The reform promoted by the Government proposes a distinction that for its critics is a gap through which all Andean mining fits.

The key is in the seventh article of the majority opinion: it allows each province to determine its own enforcement authority to define which periglacial areas fulfill a water function and which do not. Only those who comply with it will continue to be protected. Those who do not, will be authorized for mining and hydrocarbon projects. For the Government and the governors of mountain provinces such as San Juan, La Rioja, Mendoza or Catamarca, this is legal predictability to attract investments. For environmentalists, it is a regression that empties the original protection of its content.

The additional complication came from the UCR, which at the last minute presented an alternative project to the majority opinion. The central difference between the two texts lies in who has the technical power to define which areas are protected: the ruling party grants it to the provinces; the UCR concentrates it in IANIGLA, the Argentine Institute of Nivology, Glaciology and Environmental Sciences, a national technical organization with decades of expertise in the field. This dispute, which at first glance seems administrative, has enormous consequences: a mining province could have incentives to declare that certain periglacial areas have no water function, facilitating extraction. IANIGLA, on the other hand, would act with exclusively scientific criteria.

⚠️ Technical warning: Environmental organizations pointed out in the last few hours that certain articles of the reform to the glacier law could collide with environmental commitments included in the text of the Mercosur-EU agreement itself, generating a legislative paradox in the same session.

🗳️  THE VOTE MAP: WHO SUPPORTED AND WHO REJECTED

The vote on the Mercosur-EU agreement was resolved with a large majority. The Glacier Law, on the other hand, showed the seams of the ruling coalition. The PRO arrived with divided positions: while Goerling announced his affirmative vote, the senator for Chubut rejected it and the representative of La Pampa arrived at the precinct without definition. The Justicialist bloc, for its part, gave freedom of action to its senators from mining provinces. Lucía Corpacci from Catamarca and Sergio Uñac from San Juan — both former governors of their districts — were identified as the most likely to accompany the ruling party.

📋  CONTEXT: THE AGENDA THAT CLOSES THE EXTRAORDINARY SESSION

This session is the penultimate of the extraordinary sessions convened by the Executive. On Friday, February 27, the Senate is scheduled to debate the labor reform and the Juvenile Criminal Regime, two issues that generate an even more heated union and social conflict: that same day there is a general strike by several unions and the United Trade Union Front (FreSU) marches to Congress.

On Sunday, March 1, President Javier Milei will formally open the ordinary session with a speech before the Legislative Assembly, where governors, deputies and senators will listen to the government's agenda for the year. In this context, this Thursday's session works as a preview of the disputes that will mark Argentine politics in the coming months: trade liberalization, federalism, the environment and extractive investments are braided into a single legislative day.

The appointment of Fernando Iglesias as ambassador to Belgium and the EU completes the strategic picture: the Executive is looking for a political interlocutor of maximum confidence in Brussels, just when the mechanisms for implementing the agreement will begin to be designed. Iglesias, who built his public profile as a combative and polemicist legislator, will assume in the Belgian capital a role that will demand other types of skills: technical negotiation, institutional representation and knowledge of the workings of the European community bureaucracy.

🏛️

One session, two destinations: the outside world and the glaciers within.

Argentina chose today to open up to global trade. The environmental cost of that opening is still being written.

Sources: Infobae · La Nación · APF Digital · InfoRegion · Textual Journal · Provincial Viewpoint · The Sun · Argentine Foreign Ministry · INAI Foundation · El Cronista · Agencia Noticias Argentinas

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