Mercosur: what’s new, what's next in the deal?

Just three days after the announcement of the conclusion of the Mercosur agreement, farmers' tractors were already making themselves heard, Monday, outside the building of the Council of the European Union, where the 27 European ministers for agriculture were gathering.

Organised by the farmers European lobby, COPA-COGECA, and Belgian farmer unions, the demonstration denounced the unfair competition that European farmers would suffer once the Mercosur Agreement enters into force.

“We cannot find in this agreement any benefits for the farmers," COGECA’s president Lennart Nilsson told Euronews, “we want reciprocity in the standards of production in the Mercosur countries and in Europe.”

After 25 years of negotiations, the Mercosur agreement was signed on 6 December between the European Union and the Mercosur countries-Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. It will create a free trade area covering 780 million people, with a crucial market of 280 million consumers in Latin America for European companies, 30,000 of which are already operating in the area. Customs duties, currently between 10% and 35%, will gradually disappear on most products, the European Commission is expecting a boom of European exports in wine, spirits, and dairy sectors.

Agricultural and environmental concerns have always been at the heart of preoccupations since a group of countries led by France opposed a political agreement reached with Mercosur countries in 2019. What has changed since then? “We have listened carefully the concerns in our constituencies,” a Commission senior official said after the deal was announced on Friday.  One of the key elements of the new agreement, brandished by the European Commission, concerns environmental standards.

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