European lawmakers voted by a wide margin earlier on Tuesday to approve additional safeguard measures to protect European farmers should local markets be destabilized by a glut of cheaper agricultural produce from Mercosur member nations (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay). Out of the 662 lawmakers attending, 431 MEPs voted in favor, 161 against and 70 abstained.
“The Parliament has shown that it is possible to move forward responsibly in trade policy without putting our farmers at risk,” Gabriel Mato, the lead lawmaker on the file, told a news conference after the vote.
Mato, a Spanish Christian Democrat, said he hoped that EU co-legislators would be able to move forward quickly at a lightning round of interinstitutional talks on Wednesday afternoon. Once there’s an agreement on the safeguard instrument, a vote on the overall deal by EU ambassadors is penciled in for Friday, three diplomats said.
Critical here will be whether the safeguards — quick action by the Commission to protect European farmers in the event of a sudden influx of beef, poultry or other food imports from Mercosur countries — are enough to overcome doubts in France and Italy. Only then would Commission President Ursula von der Leyen be able to fly to Brazil on Saturday to finally sign the long-awaited trade accord.
Germany, which leads the EU’s pro-Mercosur camp, is warning that another delay would kill the deal.
“If there is no possibility of a deal this week then it’s probably going to be dead. We see that the deal already starts unraveling,” warned one German government official, who said the call by holdouts in the Parliament to refer the file to the CJEU could “kick the can down the road.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity.