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A range of issues, including car exports which the EU has appeared to be willing to trade for larger South American beef imports, remain unresolved ahead of a key deadline in trade talks with the Mercosur bloc next month, according to Commissioner Hogan.
"It's very open whether there will be a successful conclusion or not at this stage," he said at the council of EU agriculture ministers in Brussels this Monday. Commissioner Hogan and his colleague in charge of trade Cecilia Malmström are due to travel to South America before the end of the current cycle of talks concludes next month. Attention then turns to election campaigns in Brazil and Paraguay.
We're not making as much progress as we should
Commissioner Hogan reeled off a list of outstanding issues, including rules of origin, standards and export taxes that are holding up negotiations in addition to agriculture.
"There are a lot of areas where we're not making as much progress as we should and we're not receiving the type of offers from the Mercosur countries that we would expect, especially in relation to industrial products," he said.
Industrial products include European car and car parts, currently heavily taxed in Mercosur countries, that the EU has been hoping to include a deal.
In exchange, there have been signals from Brussels that the current European offer of 70,000t additional South American beef imports could go up to close to 100,000t. This has led the proposed deal to be dubbed beef for BMWs.
If Mercosur negotiators don't get the beef access they want and European auto makers don't get the duty-free access they've been seeking, a deal will be unlikely.
Mexico talks ongoing
Commissioner Hogan said he and Commissioner Malmström may also visit Mexico in the coming days, depending on progress in negotiations towards a trade deal there. In this case too, he warned that issues on cars, dairy and agricultural products remained.
Mexico is a major importer of dairy products.
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