Brussels must still clarify the legal basis and ratification process necessary for it to be adopted by the EU BRUSSELS, Dec. 6 (EUROPA PRESS) – The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, closed the trade agreement this Friday in Montevideo with the Mercosur countries that the European Union has been negotiating with this region for 25 years and to which France is still flatly opposed; whose president, Emmanuel Macron, warned the day before that the pact in its current state “is unacceptable” but failed to stop Brussels. “It is not only an economic opportunity, it is also a political necessity,” highlighted the head of the community Executive, in an appearance without questions alongside the current president of Mercosur and president of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, to announce the agreement that has already been The Foreign Ministers of Mercosur (Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay) advanced the day before with the Trade Commissioner, Maros Sefcovic. “We are breaking down barriers and allowing investments to come in, we are forming a market of more than 700 million consumers,” celebrated Von der Leyen, who celebrated the “true historical milestone” of an agreement between the two regions. The new framework will, according to Brussels' accounts, save European companies around 4 billion euros in tariffs each year. Lacalle Pou, for his part, has highlighted the importance of leaving behind a relationship that “did not generate trust” due to the achievement of disagreements and frustrated agreements in the last two decades; while defending that it is much more than a trade pact. “In a world in which knowledge doubles every three years, it is illogical that countries cannot understand each other in those periods of time,” the Uruguayan president reasoned, after joking that today he will return home “more calm.” and ensure that Mercosur leaders agree, “with different concepts”, on the “significance of the day.” In the absence of the rest of the Mercosur leaders speaking out publicly, the Uruguayan has announced that Santiago Peña (Paraguay) said at the meeting that “he was not satisfied, but he was enthusiastic”, while Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil) said so. has considered it a “historic day” and Javier Milei (Argentina) has pointed out the “transcendence and importance” of the agreement. «It is a very important achievement. Now the Member States will evaluate it and decide,” said the President of the European Council, the Portuguese António Costa, for his part, to remind that the end of the negotiations does not automatically imply the adoption of the announced association and trade agreement. The new trade regime involves the progressive elimination of 91% of the tariffs that apply to European quotas that enter Mercosur, for example to agri-food products of interest to Spain such as olive oil, wine, fruits and vegetables and pork. . In return, the EU will also liberalize most of the access to its market, although tariff quotas remain for especially sensitive products and more than 350 protected Geographical Indications of the EU are recognized. Another key in the current geopolitical context is binding commitments to avoid restrictions on the export of raw materials.
LONG PROCESS FOR ITS RATIFICATION
Shortly before the agreement was confirmed after more than two decades of negotiations, the community spokesperson on trade matters, Olof Gill, warned in a press conference from Brussels that the agreement could not be considered signed, because what happened in Montevideo , on the margins of the Mercosur summit, is a political agreement on the texts negotiated at a technical level. “The political agreement is only the first step of a long process, it is only the beginning,” he indicated, referring to the fact that after the conclusion of the negotiations a long process begins that will begin with the legal examination of the texts by the legal services of the Community Executive and its translation into all the official languages of the EU, which will take several months, before entering the phase that allows the Treaty to be signed and ratified. Only then will Brussels announce the legal basis it will propose for its ratification both in the Council and in the European Parliament. In any case, community sources maintain that the simple announcement represents a “change in the psychology” of companies that now know that there will be a free trade framework and, therefore, assume that there will already be investments that “anticipate” its entry into force. This is an agreement between negotiators that still needs, on the European side, to go through a ratification process that will take time and will probably involve Brussels 'chopping up' the Treaty. In this way, the commercial part can be adopted by a qualified majority of the Twenty-Seven and thus prevent France from vetoing it if it does not gain enough support to form a blocking minority. It will also have to be ratified by the European Parliament, but will avoid ratification in the 27 national parliaments if it is confirmed that the trade framework will go separately. The EU and Mercosur already reached an agreement in principle like this in 2019, but in the ratification process it collided with the reservations of countries such as France and Ireland, which demanded tougher environmental safeguards and mirror clauses to avoid a disadvantage for European farmers. These demands are those that the parties have negotiated in an attached declaration that will complete the Treaty that they negotiated then and that includes, according to community sources, a clause that will allow the agreement to be partially or totally suspended if one of the parties deviates from the commitments of the agreement. Paris climate. For the moment, only France has been categorical in its rejection of the new agreement despite the additional provisions negotiated, although Poland, Ireland, the Netherlands and Austria have also shown reservations if accompanying measures are not sought to offset the impact on their own sectors. strategic. However, from the last meeting of EU Trade Ministers held last week, different European sources consulted by Europa Press point out that with the calculator in hand, France still does not have enough support to have a blocking minority, although Yes, he could achieve it if he convinces Italy, which is still hesitant.
Von der Leyen ignores Macron's 'no' and closes the EU trade agreement with Mercosur
