AT A meeting in Brussels this week, officials from the European Union (EU) and Mercosur exchanged offers to cut tariffs and expand market access for each others’ goods and services. This is their second attempt to begin serious negotiations on a free-trade agreement—a mere 16 years after the idea was first mooted.

The first effort collapsed in 2004, when both sides judged the other’s offer to be insufficiently ambitious. Even now, nobody should count on success. The core Mercosur countries—Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay—are keener. But 13 European countries, led by France, want to scupper the talks because their farmers are scared of Mercosur, the world’s most competitive producer of grains and meat. They forced the EU to withdraw, at the last minute, proposed tariffs cuts on beef.

A trade pact between the blocks would make shopping cheaper for 750m consumers. The EU wants accords on services and government procurement. Brazil’s law firms are notorious for protecting their home market, while its construction and engineering companies used corrupt practices to win contracts from Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company. As for Mercosur, Europe is potentially a big market for some of its manufactures as well as its grains and soyabeans.

If the talks prosper, the biggest benefit for Mercosur could be the reviving of its original mission of boosting trade and investment. Over the past dozen years, left-wing governments in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay have turned Mercosur into a political club. They invited Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela to join; Bolivia, under Evo Morales, followed (neither is part of the EU talks). Buoyed by high prices for their commodities, they proclaimed their commitment to “south-south” economic ties.

They did strike useful agreements on migration, pensions and tourism. But they lost interest in trade deals with rich countries and in deepening economic integration in Mercosur itself. Although Mercosur claims to be a customs union (like the EU) with a common tariff and foreign-trade policy, in practice it is not even a proper free-trade area. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s former president, imposed quotas and licences on imports from Brazil. Uruguayan truckers face harassment in Brazil, says Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou, a Uruguayan senator. Intra-Mercosur trade was only 14% of its members’ total trade in 2014, down from 19.5% in 1995. Mercosur thus excluded itself from regional value chains in which much production is now organised—as well as from new trans-regional trade and investment agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

A light breeze of change is now in the air. Argentina’s new president, Mauricio Macri, is opening up his country after Ms Fernández tried to shut it off from the world. Tabaré Vázquez, Uruguay’s president, recognises that Mercosur is suffering from “fatigue”. The impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president, would bring to power people who are more open to trade talks with Europe and the United States, and who are “very critical of the south-south strategy”, says Alfredo Valladão, a Brazilian political scientist at Sciences Po, a French university.

The obstacles to renewal in Mercosur remain large. In the short term Brazil’s political upheaval divides the group. At a meeting last month to mark the 25th anniversary of the Treaty of Asunción, Mercosur’s founding document, most of the Brazilian parliamentary delegation walked out in protest when Jorge Taiana, who was once Ms Fernández’s foreign minister and now chairs the block’s parliament, called Ms Rousseff’s impeachment “a coup”. Many in Uruguay’s left-wing government are wary of collaborating with Michel Temer, who is poised to replace Ms Rousseff as Brazil’s president. Argentina is cautious about freeing trade in cars within Mercosur, fearing that Brazil’s currently idle factories will flood its market. Most Brazilian industry lives on “protection and subsidies”, says Mr Valladão.

But some Brazilian industrialists are starting to realise that the state has run out of money to prop them up and that protectionism has weakened them. China has wrested markets from Brazilian manufacturers across Latin America. Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico formed the Pacific Alliance of free-trading economies; on May 1st they eliminated tariffs on 92% of their trade with each other and will phase out the rest over 17 years.

Brazil’s industry lobbies, like its probable new president, now want to talk trade with the United States as well as the EU. But free trade has become politically toxic in the north. While they were indulging ideological dreams, Mercosur’s governments were also missing the trade boat.