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Limassol – The free trade agreement with the Mercosur countries continues to raise concerns and criticism from the member states of the European Union (EU) and farmers, but there is no need to fear it. EU Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maroš Šefčovič stated this for TASR.
Maroš Šefčovič on Thursday (15 January) – before Friday’s departure for Paraguay, where he is accompanying the President of the European Commission (EC) Ursula von der Leyen and the President of the European Council Antonio Costa, who will sign the agreement with the Mercosur countries on behalf of the EU – took part in a joint meeting of the College of Commissioners with members of the Cypriot government in the Cypriot port of Limassol.
He welcomed the fact that the Cypriot Presidency of the Council of the EU on 9 January secured a vote in which a qualified majority of member countries supported the agreement with Mercosur. After it is signed in Paraguay, the same process awaits this agreement in the European Parliament and subsequently Cyprus will be responsible for ensuring its ratification by the member states as quickly as possible.
Šefčovič recalled that the EU has already experienced a similar situation when approving the trade agreement with Canada (CETA).
“Canada is the latest example where the conclusion of the agreement was also preceded by very intense discussion, and the concerns of the food industry community were very strong. Today, eight years after its conclusion, there is absolute satisfaction, also because mutual trade has increased by 60 percent,” he explained.
He added that none of the negative scenarios materialised in the case of CETA. The agreement is advantageous for farmers, for engineers, and it significantly helps both the European and Canadian economies.
“The agreement with Mercosur also contains sufficiently strong guarantees, both financial and administrative. Let’s say that farmers will not be endangered. The mechanisms that the European Commission proposed for their protection were approved in the European Parliament,” he pointed out.
According to him, the EC approached this agreement with exceptional sensitivity. All import quotas in the area of sensitive commodities such as beef, ethanol or chicken meat were carefully set. Under no circumstances can they pose a threat to European farmers.
“At the same time, we have introduced unprecedented legal guarantees that provide such protection for European farmers that if imports from Mercosur countries were to rise by five percent or if the price of these sensitive commodities were to jump by five percent on the European market, then the European Commission would have to intervene. It can apply emergency brakes. All specific measures to protect farmers were summarised in a European regulation, the strongest legal instrument the EU has at its disposal,” he described the situation.
The Commission is also continuing to work on aligning procedures in the area of pesticide use, in the area of animal welfare, on increasing controls through European veterinary audits of goods from Mercosur countries, as well as in the main points of import, which are European ports and airports.
“Everything possible has been done to ensure that products and commodities imported into Europe from these countries meet the most demanding European criteria. As an additional safeguard, a financial guarantee was approved in the form of a so‑called safety net for farmers amounting to 6.3 billion euros. I consider this a kind of insurance,” said Šefčovič. And he expressed his conviction that, just as in the case of Canada, there will be no negative trends in the implementation of the agreements with Mercosur and that everyone will be pleasantly surprised by the significant impact this will have on the economies of the Mercosur countries and the EU countries. (16 January)