STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP
At the National Assembly, in Paris, October 31, 2024.
POLITICS – According to them, this agreement “pulls” European ambition. More than 200 French deputies from left and right called on Monday, November 4, the government to block the conclusion of the expected free trade agreement between the EU and the Mercosur countries.
“The agreement, negotiated by the European Commission, betrays twice what the European Union should be. It betrays the ambition to raise environmental, social and health standards. It also betrays the commitment to the food sovereignty of our continent”write in a column these 209 parliamentarians, from the Democratic and Republican Left, Socialists, Ecologists, Ensemble Pour la République (EPR), Democrats, Horizons, Liberté Indépendants Outre-mer et Territoires, and Republican Right groups.
“We refuse to open European markets to chicken doped with antibiotics, to beef raised against a backdrop of deforestation, to corn treated with atrazine…”they write, rejecting “an agreement whose content, negotiated since 1999, still does not contain any solid commitment on the environmental, social and health levels”.
Angry agricultural unions
For them, “while France has lost 100,000 agricultural farms in ten years, it risks losing the same number in the coming decade, while 75% of deforestation in Brazil is linked to cattle breeding , this agreement would amount to sacrificing our deep values to short-term commercial and geopolitical interests, to a race for influence and new markets”.
“The President of the Republic has made commitments to farmers and environmental organizations, united in this fight”they emphasize. “We, MPs from all sides, ask the government to block the conclusion of the agreement (…), and the European Commission to respect this French veto”.
Among the signatories are the communist André Chassaigne, the socialists Dominique Potier, Guillaume Garot, François Hollande, Philippe Brun, the ex-Insoumis François Ruffin, the LR Julien Dive, Corentin Le Fur, Olivier Marleix and even the elected EPR Sandrine Le Feur and Stéphane Travert (former Minister of Agriculture).
Negotiations with the Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia) have resumed in recent months under the leadership of European countries including Germany and Spain. The prospect of a conclusion provokes the anger of French agricultural unions, who announce a new mobilization for mid-November.
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