Buenos Aires Herald 
Argentina will start the procedure to join the OECD on December 11, President Javier Milei’s incoming foreign minister Diana Mondino announced at an event at Palacio San Martin, the foreign ministry headquarters, on Sunday afternoon.
“This morning, we agreed with Mr. Andreas Schaal of the OECD that tomorrow, Argentina will sign its access to the OECD,” said Mondino, as her audience broke into applause.
The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) is an international group of 38 mostly European and North American countries which is informally known as the global rich countries’ club. Its headquarters are in Paris.
The OECD council opened membership talks with Argentina in January 2022, along with Brazil, Bulgaria, Croatia, Peru and Romania. It did not immediately publish a statement in response to Mondino’s announcement.
“I’m very glad, but I believe what we’re going to do is accept the invitation to start the accession process,” posted Hector Torres, a former IMF Executive Director and member of the WTO staff, on X, in response to claims that Argentina would sign its entry to the OECD directly.
Countries that wish to join the OECD are required to abide by a convention expressing the group’s values, which include preserving individual liberties, respecting democratic values, the rule of law, and human rights, as well as maintaining a transparent free market economy.
Observers have noted that joining the OECD is typically interpreted as a nod that a country will adopt market-friendly policies and make it easier to do business.
Argentina BRICS membership
In August, Argentina’s now ex-president Alberto Fernández announced that Argentina would join the BRICS, a bloc of emerging economies in the Global South that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
Other countries invited to join alongside Argentina were Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Argentina was scheduled to join the BRICS on January 1, 2024, but both Milei and Mondino have said that they would not bring the country into the group.
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