Commission must rethink Mercosur approach to ease farmer unrest

After 25 years of discussions, a deal between the EU and the Mercosur bloc looks imminent. The European Commission should soften the blow for Europe’s farmers.

Farmers demonstrate outside the European Parliament, as they protest over price pressures, taxes and red tape.

This article was originally published in The Parliament Magazine

“It will kill us!” pleaded one Belgian dairy farmer outside the European Commission headquarters. “We have high standards here and they don’t.” 

It’s less than a year since farmers descended on Brussels in February, setting fire to tyres and spraying EU buildings with slurry. Now, as the bloc prepares to sign a trade deal with the Mercosur group of five Latin American countries, Europe’s farmers feel once again that their voices aren’t being heard. 

This time, they say, the threat is existential and they’re prepared to boycott supermarkets – potentially leading to food shortages for consumers across the continent. 

The furore has been 25 years in the making as the EU-Mercosur agreement, after countless setbacks and delays, finally appears ready to be signed. The deal would remove import duties overnight on over 90 per cent of EU goods exported to Mercosur in return for preferential EU market access for hundreds of thousands of tonnes of South American beef and poultry. 

Brazil and Argentina, Mercosur’s agricultural powerhouses, drove the negotiations forward. In Europe, manufacturing economies would stand to gain the most, whereas heavily agricultural countries including France have sounded alarm bells. But with his government collapsed, French President Emmanuel Macron could now find himself unable to block the deal.

European farmers adhere to the highest level of sanitary standards worldwide to have their goods deemed saleable across the single market. Many go beyond even this high standard including those in France, which typically bans certain pesticides before other EU member states. 

That means Europe’s farmers are at risk of being undercut by cheaper products from abroad, unless officials make sure to apply equally high standards to those imports.

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French Prime Minister Michel Barnier, who has since resigned after pushing through a budget that opponents said would harm the most vulnerable in French society, called the deal “disastrous” for French farmers, saying it would be wrong to force it through against the will of “a country like France.” 

Confirmation hearings​ ​last month for the EU’s new batch of Commissioners failed to shed much light on where compromise could come from. Brussels stalwart Maroš Šefčovič, newly in charge of the Green Deal, says the EU executive is still committed to the deal but offered little elaboration. 

“Farmers are furious” graffitied in French outside the European Commission

Christophe Hansen, now in charge of EU agricultural policy, might be expected to sympathise with farmers: He was one himself, and is the cousin of Luxembourg’s current farming minister. “My heart bleeds when I go to a South American supermarket and I see counterfeit Parmesan” was a ​​memorable line from his confirmation hearing. 

But Hansen still had no answer when MEPs probed him for technical details of whether high European standards would apply to imported meat, including a ban on the use of hormones to increase the quantity of meat each cow produces. European trade associations say there are gaps in Brazil’s ability to trace the use of such hormones. 

In the latest meeting between MEPs and Mercosur officials, a Brazilian negotiator denied there was any risk to European consumers since those “hormones are banned in Brazil” and the country’s exports “comply with EU standards.” 

​​Nevertheless​, Hansen has to walk a tightrope. Farmers are already struggling with poor harvests caused by climate change and have other worries about reforms to the common agricultural policy and even the rise of plant-based proteins. 

If the Commission pushes through an EU-Mercosur deal that doesn’t take their concerns into account, don’t be surprised if farmers once more descend on Brussels.