According to the secretary general of COPA-COGECA, granting mercosur countries access to the European market in the way the Commission is proposing would be to the detriment of European farmers.

Pekka Pesonen told the EU policy website Vieuws.eu that the move to relaunch the trade talks was “not a very smart move from the Commission negotiators”.

COPA-COGECA, which represents farmers from across Europe, argues that the Commission’s move seriously endangers European agriculture, especially in some of the sectors which they refer to as sensitive.

“We do not support the Commission going forward with the extended offer. We need to see a much improved counter offer from the Mercosur countries and what they are willing to do in return and we certainly haven’t seen that yet.”

The secretary general also called for “the elimination of all sensitive product lines from this so-called improved offer”.

“We believe that opening these trade negotiations in this way would seriously endanger EU farmers and we are very much talking about production standards.”

TTIP

Pekka Pesonen also talked about the TTIP trade talks, which he described as a “major challenge for both the US and EU because we are both big partners. It’s about two equals talking to each other to find a common approach, hopefully to be used at a later stage as an international benchmark for agri-food trade. In this respect we support the TTIP process, but we have to take a look into what actually happens in the end. To what extent did the Commission defend our interests, especially when it comes to European standards of production? This is highly important for us.”

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Full coverage: Mercosur

Full coverage: TTIP