Meeting in Asunción from 20 February to try to lift the final obstacles to a compromise on the commercial strand of an association agreement between the EU and Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), European and South American negotiators will continue their discussions at technical level this week in the Paraguayan capital, where Commissioners Cecilia Malmström (Trade) and Phil Hogan (Agriculture) may fly in on Sunday 4 March if they consider that enough progress has been made, a European source close to the dossier told us on Monday 26 February.
The talks are struggling over the lack of a sufficient Mercosur offer on access to the market for cars and spare parts as well as EU dairy products, the source told us.
Furthermore, concerning its concessions over beef meat, the EU insists that it will not go beyond what it has proposed in the framework of its revised offer on sensitive agricultural products, which is conditional on significant concessions from Mercosur, tabled informally at the end of January to try to facilitate an agreement, specifically an EU import tariff quota for South American beef that will be increased from 70,000 to 99,000 tonnes (see EUROPE 11950, 11963).
Upon her arrival in Sofia on Monday, where she is to attend an informal meeting of the trade ministers of the EU on Tuesday 27 February, Malmström told a conference with Bulgarian civil society that the parties were very close to an agreement. She added that she was confident the outstanding issues could be resolved, but stressed that she could not give a date, stressing that the forthcoming elections in Brazil were piling on the pressure. She went on to say that they had identified the remaining problems and made enormous progress. “We are discussing matters concerning vehicles, which are very important for the EU. And, as always in trade negotiations, there are agricultural questions to be resolved”.
The EU and Mercosur still hope to reach an agreement in principle before the general elections campaigns get underway, in Brazil this March and at the end of April in Paraguay.
Concerns for French and Irish beef. In the meantime, the talks have given rise to serious concerns in the agricultural sector in France and Ireland, which fear for their beef producers.
In response to the Irish agriculture Minister, Michael Creed, in a letter dated 21 February, Malmström said that she took note of his reservations concerning the possible effect of EU/Mercosur for talks on the beef meat sector of the EU and his concerns regarding the EU's offer in this area, but explained that it was unrealistic to expect Mercosur to accept the scrapping of its high customs duty and non-tariff barriers affecting EU exports in almost all sectors, including agriculture, with no concessions on beef.
In France, the government is trying to reassure an agricultural sector that is up in arms, against the backdrop of this week's Salon International de l'Agriculture in Paris.
The French Minister for the ecological and inclusive transition, Nicolas Hulot, said on Sunday 25 February that an EU/Mercosur agreement was unacceptable as it stands, adding that it was too harmful for French farmers and that France had very clear lines in the sand.
On a visit to the agriculture salon the day before, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, reassured farmers who have asked about his intentions on the subject that there was no question of an EU/Mercosur agreement that would make it possible to import food under less binding social and environmental conditions. “There will be no watering-down of our quality, social, environmental or sanitary standards through these negotiations”, he stressed. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)