Poland, France to Discuss Concerns Over Mercosur Trade Deal

Poland is looking to join forces with France and Italy to block a trade deal between the European Union and Latin America’s Mercosur bloc that’s been a quarter of a century in the making.

French Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard will meet her Polish counterpart in Warsaw in the coming days to “compare their lists of objections” to the deal, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Tuesday. The trade pact was an important element of recent bilateral talks with Paris, he added.

“We will then perhaps come up with a joint position with France and Italy, which would then make for a sufficient blocking minority” for the deal, Sikorski told reporters in Warsaw.

The long-delayed Mercosur trade pact comprising Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay was agreed to in principle in 2019 but has mainly been held up by French objections since.

On Monday, Genevard told France Bleu Besancon radio that the country is reaching out to other EU states including the Netherlands, Italy and Poland to try to form a “veto minority” to block the deal “which is not a good accord, and which crystallizes the deep discontent of farmers.”

Poland has a history of shielding its agricultural industry from foreign competition. The previous government last year imposed a unilateral ban on grain imports from Ukraine sparking a diplomatic spat with Kyiv. Polish farmers organized a conference in front of the Polish parliament today to express their disagreement with the Mercosur deal and said that if the government came out in favor of the pact, they would organize protests across the country.

In France, farmers and meat and poultry producers are demanding guarantees that their Latin American rivals comply with EU health and environmental standards, including on antibiotics and pesticides.

The country’s top farming unions, grappling with bleak harvests due to bad weather, had given the new government until mid-November to meet their demands — which include protecting inter-European trade from cheaper competition.

Mercosur producers are currently the EU’s largest suppliers of bovine and poultry meat, and a potential agreement would significantly increase those volumes, hurting local producers, the unions said in a statement last week.

Tags: EU, France, Poland, agricultural products, restrictions, Italy