As a European I’m curious, MERCOSUR blames France of fearing to not export its agricultural products as much as now and France blames MERCOSUR to not reach EU’s standards in term of food quality…so what are your thoughts?
As a European I’m curious, MERCOSUR blames France of fearing to not export its agricultural products as much as now and France blames MERCOSUR to not reach EU’s standards in term of food quality…so what are your thoughts?
Comments
I think it’s just France doing France things
France being proctetionist. Its a shitty deal anyways, so, let them stall it.
It’s just France being France.
I mean, if it isn’t passed it’d only signal to the world how ineffective the EU is at striking international deals. In a way, it’ll determine whether the EU can actually be a global player or merely a local actor in this coming multipolar world of ours.
It really just makes it blatantly obvious how bad the EU is at taking decisions and how badly EU reform id needed since a single country can pretty much block anything.
Especially since I’ve read through it and, honestly, it feels too much in favour of the EU, especially when it comes to the Paris climate accords stuff.
As for Mercosur, honestly we’ll just probably start talks of a deal with China if France blocks it again. And I personally think we should probably strike desls with other emerging markets as well, ASEAN being the biggest one for that as of right now.
Honestly, I think the deal is good for both sides, but if France wants to sabotage the deal I couldn’t care less. They keep coming up with excuses to extract even more concessions from Mercosur, if they keep doing this we should just say fuck off and finish burying this deal. Problem for the EU to deal with, not us.
They will have to bend the knee eventually. Brazil has 365 days of summer, you cant outcompete the effectiveness of that. Of course we will have cheaper food if we can produce it 365 days of the year. And I doubt France’s meat is any better than argentinian, meaning, the quality argument is bullshit. So at the end of the day its 100% protectionism.
To boycott the possibility of trading your industrial goods at discounted rate just to protect the farmers class is economic dumb in my opinion. Specially because your farmers wont have the effectiveness of ours.
France being France.
They want our cheap labor and consumers, but don’t want our agriculture because it would negatively impact their yellow vest voters.
Hate to break it to you France, but in deals you don’t get to be the sole winners, it’s give and get.
Understand the numbers and then take your conclusions. European agricultural GDP amounts for 2% of their GDP. It receives annually 22% of this amount in direct payments subsidies. It’s one third of all EU subsides. All this created a cast with strong political voice and a market flooding with product and artificial prices. Land prices skyrocketed. The deal does not even touch the core of the entire sector, Brazil already max all the quotas that were established, but they feel it would be hard to survive any push in prices. It’s very close to Venezuela when they used to pay rice producers with petro dollars and distribute food as a perk for the population. The deal will not happen because Europe is not being reasonable with itself, imagine with others.
They are scared that the imported items will be more successfully recieved and more in demand then their own locally grown products.
The deal went through 20+ years of negotiations, all the rough edges on how to deal with standards for products have been figured out long ago. That’s not the issue. Nobody is forcing France to buy anything they don’t want to, after all. I’ve seen some arguments from the french farmers and the amount of malicious disinformation being spewed is unreal. I saw a farmer’s representative saying Brazilian meat is bad because cattle raised in confinement required hormones… but the vast majority of cattle herds in Brazil is free range! Also, they try to force a connection with deforestation… I mean, if they’re raised in confinement, why would the producers need more land? I mean, get real!
The real problem is they fear competition. Same with the critics of the deal on our side, tbh. But that’s short-sighted. There’s plenty of agricultural products we cannot produce simply because of climate. Wine, for instance! And our industry also suffers from import tariffs on equipment that European companies have. This could be a win-win, specially considering the alternative markets are China and the US, which is uncomfortable for both us and the EU countries.
Honestly this deal has been under negotiation for 2 decades, and the eu parliament has already approved it. If the deal gets blocked by individual European nations then I am in favor of ceasing negotiations, and letting you guys figure it out between yourselves if you are willing to accept the deal as it is.
Meanwhile we should be focusing our efforts into the countries that actually do want to trade and prosper together, like East Asia and the rest of Latin America
I’m very ignorant on this topic, but in my opinion and based on what I understand, it seems reasonable that there are environmental and health standards, and that if you demand those from your own farmers, you shouldn’t require less from foreign imports either.
However, I don’t know how this works in the European Union. Does each country have different standards to meet, and are France’s more strict? Is the basis for setting those standards based solely on European studies?
Maybe the ideal would be to find and facilitate a way for Mercosur to better meet those standards and thus move forward with the agreement, or to form a deal that includes a commitment to gradually adjust regulations over a set period of time.
I honestly think such an agreement would benefit both sides, and here there is a market more than willing to consume your products. But if France’s blockade continues, in the end Mercosur will just look to further strengthen trade ties with China and other countries.
Also, I believe time is not on our side right now, especially for Europe, which could end up more commercially isolated.
protectionism. can’t even hate it
Well, that China is the only one winning.
France is shooting itself in the foot, again. Just like when they messed up Algerian gas deals after the Ukraine war, now they’re blocking the EU-MERCOSUR trade deal, supposedly to “protect” farmers and the environment.
So, France’s stance is that they won’t deal with Russia, they won’t deal with China, they won’t deal with the US, they won’t deal with Latin America, and they won’t deal with half of Africa. Then who? The European egos is exactly what’s going to be their downfall, they still believe they can fight this along.
I’m not from the EU, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Mercosur deal already go through in December last year?
France is trying to protect it’s farmers, it’s understandable but it can’t last, MERCOSUR produces quality produce way cheaper than anyone in europe.
Between the war in ukraine and the US doing… things, the EU simply needs this deal as much as we do.
I’d never trust europeans too much. They look down on us and our products.
Of course France will block it, since they want to protect their agriculture. The food quality standard is just the excuse.
That’s what happen when tariff-merry entity 1 clashes with tariff-merry entity 2.
At least OP is being honest and recognizes how unfair is the French blocking of the initiative, many of the people answering to OP essentially are claiming that others must bend to their trade barriers.
EU food quality is definitely not higher quality than MERCOSUR food, that’s ridiculous.
Dunno, but dont really care.
I don’t think there is much what to gain from selling to the EU nowadays. The Vietnam beef export deal is much more worth than a EU one. The EU is a dying continent, and the economy there is about to go upside down.
Thr French always seem to be butthurt about something since they got beat up by the Germans back to back. They need to realize they’re not an empire anymore, nobody cares about France.
First of all, the deal is structured in a way that limits certain agricultural exports from Mercosur, so the EU’s heavily subsidised agriculture won’t be hurt by the trade deal. While giving the EU an advantage when it comes to their industry.
French farmers are only upset about the deal because they need something to protest about, and the restrictions on agriculture and the quality of meat are not an issue. When you consider that Israel, one of the countries with some of the most stringent sanitary laws, accepts Mercosur meat imports, even with the requirement that it be kosher, you can see that it’s clearly not an issue.
The EU and Mercosur have been negotiating this deal for 20 years, that’s 2 freaking decades, and Mercosur has agreed to fewer benefits many times. If they continue to play games and France sabotages the deal, then Mercosur should just walk out of the deal and call it what it really was, which was a total waste of time.
If France vetoes the trade agreement, it’s time for Mercosur to humour the EU’s clear signs that they don’t want the deal and find other trading partners because that’s exactly what they’re saying Mercosur should do.