Brussels, 22/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - Negotiations for an association agreement between the EU and Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) were relaunched last May. This agreement includes a wide trade section and is making progress. Nonetheless, EU agricultural member states are remaining alert.
The fourth EU-Mercosur agreement negotiating session on the 14 and 18 March in Brussels made progress on several chapters - rules of origin, public procurement, services and investment, competition and resolving disputes. The different parties, however, admitted that “additional and intensive work is further required in all the different negotiating areas.” European and South American negotiators will now prepare improved offers on market access. They will then arrange a date for exchanging these offers and on 2-6 May they will meet again in Asunción, followed by meetings on 4-8 July in Brussels.
The European Commission is steering a course in negotiations with the Mercosur bloc towards obtaining an agreement. Nevertheless, this agreement now has little chance of being completed before the summer (as had previously been hoped for by Karel De Gucht, the trade commissioner). At the Council, certain member states expressed misgivings and remain on their guard. Thus during the fourth negotiating session last week, the Netherlands, supported by several states (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Poland and Slovenia) called on the European Commission to report back on EU-Mercosur talks at the Agriculture Council on 17 March. The Netherlands said that it was in favour of resuming discussions and appealed for Europeans and South Americans to reach an “ambitious” and “sustainable” agreement but insisted on “the necessity of a final agreement providing genuinely new market access for European producers and investments and that it takes into account the EU's offensive and defensive interests, including the agricultural sector and concerns regarding animal welfare and sustainability”. Speaking on behalf of the European Commission, the commissioner for agriculture, Dacian Cioloº, provided assurances to member states that the results from the agriculture negotiations impact analysis (which is still being carried out) would be sent to delegations before an offer on market access is put on the table by Mercosur countries.
The European Commission will, above all, have to deal with the misgivings expressed by France and Ireland, which have provided Commissioners Cioloº and De Gucht with warnings on a number of occasions. Meeting on 18 March in Paris (the day after the Agriculture Council), the French and Irish ministers for agriculture, Bruno Le Maire and Simon Coveney, were once again wary about talks with Mercosur. In a joint press release, the two ministers emphasised that “European agriculture cannot be the adjustment variable on trade negotiations in a very difficult context for many agricultural sectors, beef in particular”. The two ministers said that this sector was not only important strategically but was also extremely efficient in the global fight against climate change. Last weekend, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, went even further and in an interview quoted in the Brazilian weekly Veja published on 12 March, he hammered home the fact that France had gone to the limit “of what it can accept, particularly with regard to agricultural questions. Going any further would endanger the livelihoods of many French and European cattle producers… the EU is broadly in favour of agricultural imports from Mercosur. We are even, by far, the biggest purchaser of Mercosur products. If we are to remain in favour of an agreement, it has to be balanced, which also implies that Mercosur should be prepared to meet European demands on services and industry.” (E.H./transl.fl)