The Taoiseach has not ruled out Ireland supporting the EU-Mercosur trade deal, which member states will vote to either accept or reject on Friday.<\/p>\n
Speaking in China, Miche\u00e1l Martin said he “still has concerns” over the deal but that “a lot of progress has been made” and the Government will make a decision on the matter “towards the end of the week”.<\/p>\n
He said the announcement in respect of an improvement in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy “is also welcome”.<\/p>\n
“That improvement has to be welcomed, because income to Irish farmers is key,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Martin added that Ireland has been working with “like-minded countries” in relation to the proposed agreement and that “significant safeguards” have been negotiated in the last 12 months.<\/p>\n
He said the issue is if there is a blocking minority on Mercosur on Friday.<\/p>\n
The Taoiseach added that the Government will “continue to engage with our partners in Europe on this and we will make a decision on this towards the end of the week”.<\/p>\n
The Irish Farmers’ Association has said the Government must continue to oppose the Mercosur trade agreement, despite the latest move by the EU Commission to link it to CAP funding.<\/p>\n
It said the Government “must hold firm on its commitment in the Programme for Government and vote no to Mercosur”.<\/p>\n
Minister of State Se\u00e1n Canney will discuss the concerns of the Regional Independents group regarding the proposed Mercosur trade deal in an online meeting with Mr Martin.<\/p>\n
Mr Canney has made clear his concerns regarding the proposed Mercosur trade deal between the EU and several South American countries led by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.<\/p>\n
He has cited differences in beef and poultry regulations applied in both regions.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the European Union’s 27 member states will vote to accept or reject the deal which has been 25 years in the making.<\/p>\n
If approved, the deal would allow Mercosur countries to export up to 99,000 tonnes of beef into the EU at a much-reduced tariff rate of 7.5%, as well as 180,000 tonnes of poultry.<\/p>\n
This has led to concerns amongst farmers of cheap South American beef flooding the EU market, which they say could be of inferior quality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Taoiseach has not ruled out Ireland supporting the EU-Mercosur trade deal, which member states will vote to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-231910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}