EU member states have moved to approve the EU-Mercosur trade deal following a majority vote by EU ambassadors on Friday morning.

Ireland, Poland, France, Austria and Hungary opposed the deal and Belgium abstained.

Meanwhile, all other member states, including Italy, voted to approve it.

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The move paves the way for the European Parliament to hold a vote on the deal in the coming weeks where every MEP, including Ireland's 14 MEPs, will vote to approve or reject the deal.

Speaking at the European Commission’s midday press briefing on Friday, Commission spokesperson Olof Gill said: “We need to be clear on what is happening procedurally at the moment.

“What is happening right now - the council is going through procedures, that won’t be complete until later this afternoon, at that point the European Commission will communicate,” he said.

Next steps

Once those procedures are complete later on Friday the Commission “will deal with the next steps.”

On Thursday, An Tánaiste Simon Harris confirmed that Ireland would vote against the trade deal in an 11th-hour announcement.

Harris said that the additional safeguards in the deal “are not sufficient to satisfy our citizens”.

The Government’s position on Mercosur, Tánaiste Harris said, has “always been clear: we did not support the deal in the form in which it was presented”.

It became more evident in the last week that the European Commission was going to get the deal, which is 25 years in the making, across the line.

CAP

Earlier this week, Commission president Ursula von der Leyen proposed to give EU member states early access to Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) funds post-2028.

The IFA had claimed the move was aimed at shoring up support for the Mercosur trade deal.

“Trying to link Mercosur to the CAP smacks of desperation and shows the Mercosur deal cannot stand on its own two feet. The two are separate issues and should remain so,” IFA president Francie Gorman said.