BRUSSELS — The European Commission has told Mercosur countries that it will propose an internal workaround to satisfy the demands of France, Poland and Italy to better protect their farmers in a landmark trade deal with the South American bloc, two senior Mercosur diplomats told POLITICO.
These safeguard measures would remain internally on the EU side, the Commission told its Mercosur counterparts on Tuesday, meaning that both sides would not have to renegotiate the long-awaited accord, the diplomats said.
Brussels will on Wednesday release the texts of its trade agreement with the Latin American trade bloc as it seeks to close the controversial deal that has been under negotiation for a quarter of a century. It will also adopt the text of an upgrade to the EU’s existing trade deal with Mexico.
The EU executive is banking that skeptical governments will have been persuaded by U.S. President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade policies to swing round behind the deal with Mercosur — which groups Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — to broaden their trading relationships.French President Emmanuel Macron has fought a rearguard action against the accord, channeling the concerns of farmers over a potential glut of cheap beef and poultry from Brazil and Argentina. Poland and Italy have also voiced concerns, but Macron still appears to lack the votes in the Council of the EU, the bloc’s intergovernmental arm, to block the accord.
Seeking to address the French concerns, Brussels in June floated the idea of a side declaration that would not require talks with Mercosur to be reopened, POLITICO reported at the time.
As expected, the agreement will be split between its trade and political sections in order to fast-track its implementation, said the Mercosur diplomats, who were granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door discussions. This would avoid lengthy ratification by the EU’s numerous national (and even sometimes regional) parliaments.
While the approval of the trade elements only requires the blessing of a qualified majority of 15 of the EU’s 27 member countries, the political part of the agreement, which touches on national competences such as investments, requires unanimity.
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