The European Commission has taken another step towards ratifying the trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur: on Wednesday 3 September it published the proposals for a Council decision on the signing and conclusion of the agreement. It did the same for the agreement with Mexico (see EUROPE 13701/3).
“Concerns from farmers: I want to assure everyone that we have heard them. This is a new Mercosur agreement”, insisted the European Commissioner for Trade, Maroš Šefčovič.
Explicit commitment to safeguard mechanisms. In order to convince the Member States opposed to the agreement - France in the first instance - to lift their blockade, the Commission has taken a further step towards them on agricultural issues: in addition to the safeguard clauses already included in the text of the negotiated agreement, it has undertaken to publish a legal act detailing the operation of the safeguard clauses under the agreement between the EU and Mercosur.
Completely independent of the agreement negotiated with the four Mercosur countries, this future legislative initiative is intended to establish enhanced surveillance of imports, but above all to introduce the possibility of automatically launching an investigation as soon as imports of a product increase by more than 10% or import prices fall by 10% or more compared to the prices charged in Europe, Maroš Šefčovič explained to the press.
The Commission also wants to reassure the agricultural sector about the speed of reaction in the event of market disruption. “It was a recurring criticism that we were taking too long to act, and by the time the measures took effect, it was already too late. From now on, the Commission will say: ‘We’re going to act very, very quickly and we’re committed to it’”, a European official told Agence Europe.
For the time being, this commitment is reflected in a document in which the European Commission promises to propose a legislative initiative to “operationalise the safeguard clause”, explained the same source.
However, this addition has not been negotiated with the Mercosur countries, which have refused in recent months to add any further elements to the safeguards. There is therefore a risk that they will see this as a unilateral measure on the part of the EU going beyond the framework of the agreement already concluded.
Members of the European Parliament and Member States may also disagree when it comes to legislating on this text, as several elected representatives have already suggested (see EUROPE 13701/2).
The future legal act does, however, reassure France, which needed guarantees that the Commission would protect European producers.
An agreement that cannot be ignored. The treaty signed in December does not address all the concerns raised by France, Ireland, Poland, Austria and Italy in terms of sanitary and phytosanitary standards or sustainable development. However, it opens up a market of 700 million consumers at a time when the US market is closing.
“It’s very important that we connect to growth centres and that we do that with clear and predictable partners”, said a senior European official when the decisions were announced.
The Commission has once again tried to offer reassurance about the impact of future imports of beef, chicken and sugar from Mercosur in particular. It insists that the volume of beef that will be subject to the reduced tariff of 7.5% represents only 1.5% of production in the EU and that the volume of poultry subject to a 0% tariff corresponds to only 1.3% of production in the Union.
The agreement will be of far greater benefit to European farmers who export to Mercosur, the Commission insists.
Towards entry into force. With this new stage, the EU is one step closer to the entry into force of the provisions on trade. The Association Agreement remains a mixed agreement under shared competence between the EU and the Member States, and will therefore require ratification by each national and regional parliament. However, the Commission has chosen to submit an interim agreement in parallel on the entire trade package, which can only be adopted at EU level by a qualified majority in the Council. It is based on the model adopted for the EU/Chile agreement in 2022 (see EUROPE 13014/25).
For all the European officials interviewed, this is the most reasonable approach, given the persistent deadlock on trade agreements in several Member States. The Commission even hopes that the decisions on approval by the Council of the EU and the European Parliament will be taken before the end of the year.
It would be a “magnificent Christmas present”, said the chair of Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, Bernd Lange (S&D, German), on Wednesday 3 September. Asked by Agence Europe about this timetable, he conceded, however, that the plenary vote would more likely come in January. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)