Farmers deserve Mercosur deal to be judged on safeguards, not slogans
Farmers protesting against the Mercosur deal at Leinster House in 2019. File picture: Andy Gibson.
After 20 years of stop-start negotiations, the EU’s proposed trade deal with the Mercosur bloc — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay — is moving from theory to reality.
On Wednesday, the European Commission will present the updated text to the College of Commissioners before it is sent to member states and then to the European Parliament for scrutiny. The commission’s aim is to have everything tied down ahead of an EU-Brazil summit this December. In the meantime, MEPs, particularly members of the agriculture and international trade committees — of which I am a member of both — will be scrutinising the deal closely in the days ahead.
