Brussels, 09/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - Under pressure from ten or so member states led by France and Ireland, as well as from MEPs and professional organisations, the European Commission renounced the inclusion of beef and ethanol in the EU's revised offer to Mercosur on Wednesday 4 May.
According to an EU source close to the issue, the Commission decided at the college of commissioners' meeting on 4 May not to include import tariff quotas for a time on beef (78,000 tonnes) and ethanol (600,000 hectolitres) in the EU's revised offer on market access. The offer is due to exchanged with the Mercosur bloc (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay - and Venezuela, which is not taking part in the talks) on 11 May (see EUROPE 11533).
The Commission thus finally gave in to the repeated warnings of ten or so member states led by France, Ireland and Poland, which at a meeting of EU trade experts on 18 April had again reiterated their opposition to the inclusion of import tariff quotas for sensitive agricultural products in the EU's revised offer.
The Commission thus also bowed to the reluctance shown at the European Parliament - where 14 MEPs led by chair of the agriculture committee Czeslaw Siekierski (EPP, Poland) had called on European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at the end of April to protect sensitive agricultural products (see EUROPE 11543) - and to the reluctance shown by the EU's agricultural organisations and cooperatives (Copa-Cogeca) - which has called on Juncker at the end of April to deal with sensitive products only at the end of the negotiations.
On Friday 6 May the French professional livestock and meat organisation, Interbev, hailed Juncker's decision to back down. Interbev also called for a similar decision for the EU-USA free trade negotiations (TTIP). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)