Farmers gather in Brussels to protest against Mercosur trade agreement
Around 100 people gathered in Brussels’ Schuman district on Wednesday to demonstrate against the signing of a European Union free trade agreement with the Mercosur countries in South America. European farmers fear the agreement will create unfair competition.
The Walloon farmers’ organisation Fugea considers the agreement a danger to farmers and the planet and says it “goes against the ambitions of the Green Deal and the strategic dialogue on the future of agriculture”.
The association rejects possible compensation and mirror clauses in the deal and says Brazil has recently admitted that it cannot guarantee that its beef has not been treated with products banned in the EU, such as hormones.
It says the European Commission is pushing for the deal to be concluded at the G20 summit in Brazil on 18 and 19 November.
'Serious concerns'
European farmers have been opposing the agreement for months, with large-scale demonstrations in Brussels in the spring in which police had to intervene. Dozens of officers watched Wednesday’s protest from a distance and traffic disruption in the capital was limited.
MEP and former Belgian prime minister Elio Di Rupo said on X that the agreement in its current form “raises serious concerns for European agriculture”.
"Europe must not be a sieve, and it cannot import products that do not meet any of our standards"
“As the European Commission accelerates negotiations, it is crucial to defend our agriculture against the risks of unfair competition,” he said. “We are not opposed to international trade, but we advocate for a regulated, fair, sustainable trade that respects our social and environmental standards.”
Meanwhile, Europe’s largest farmers’ union has called for its members to mobilise from Monday in protest at the trade deal.
Bureaucracy and standards
“We’ll be out in all the départements from Monday for a few days, to make France’s voice heard at the G20 summit in Brazil,” Arnaud Rousseau, president of the FNSEA, told France Inter radio.
“Europe must not be a sieve, and it cannot import products that do not meet any of our standards,” he said, adding that the aim of the mobilisation was not to “block” or “starve” France.
At the beginning of 2024, following their counterparts in Belgium, Spain, Germany, Greece and Poland, French farmers protested against what they saw as unfair competition from countries outside the EU, which are not subject to the same rules, and against bureaucracy and standards that they felt were too onerous.
Farmers in Brussels' European quarter during a protest against the EU-Mercosur trade agreement © BELGA PHOTO NICOLAS MAETERLINCK
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