Farmers from across the EU, including Ireland, are holding a protest this Monday in Brussels against the Mercosur trade deal.

On Friday, the European Commission and the Mercosur bloc of countries reached a political agreement on the deal.

The deal will allow up to 99,000t of South American beef preferential access to the EU market at a lower tariff rate of 7.5%.

Copa-Cogeca, the EU umbrella farm organisation, said that EU farmers and agri co-operatives are not opposed to trade, but advocate for agreements that are fair, balanced and environmentally sustainable.

“The current EU-Mercosur agreement fails to meet these criteria, using the agricultural sector as a bargaining chip to benefit other industries,” it said.

“This agreement will exacerbate the economic strain on many farms already grappling with high input prices and challenging climatic conditions."

“The evidence is overwhelming: Mercosur countries do not meet the production standards required of EU agriculture, whether in terms of plant protection products, animal welfare or sustainability practices.

"Mercosur nations also operate under lower labour and safety standards, enabling them to produce at lower costs, which makes fair competition impossible for EU producers,” it added.

IFA

IFA president Francie Gorman is in Brussels at the protest.

He said last week that the Commission may have sold out European farmers, but there is a distance to travel yet.

“Essentially, we are back to where we were in 2019 with an EU [European] Commission-agreed deal without a democratic mandate,” Gorman said.

“While the Commission president is talking up the benefits of the deal, she makes no reference to the very damaging consequences for the beef and poultry sectors,” he said.

“Simon Harris as Taoiseach and Micheál Martin as Tánaiste told the IFA national council during the general election campaign that they were opposed to the Mercosur deal. They must carry this commitment forward and oppose this deal tooth and nail,” he said.

Impact assessment

As Phelim O’Neill reported last week, the problem for farmers across Europe who are opposing the deal is that it is, overall, a good deal for the wider EU industrial economy, with only the beef and poultry sector the big losers and along with sheep to a lesser extent.

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) - the European Commission’s science and knowledge service - published a cumulative economic impact of trade agreements on EU agriculture at the beginning of this year.

Irish Farmers Journal’s beef editor Adam Woods has travelled to Brussels and will be reporting from the protest on www.farmersjournal.ie.

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