AA / Tunis
Farmers demonstrated their opposition to the free trade agreement between the European Union and the South American Mercosur countries on Thursday in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg where MEPs are meeting in plenary session, French media reported.
The demonstrators parked around twenty tractors near the European Parliament amid a chorus of horns. Banners were hung on the vehicles proclaiming “Don’t poison our children with your imported products!” or even “EU-Mercosur Treaty, death of agriculture”, indicates “Le Parisien”.
“Mehr Freiheit, Weniger Brüssel” (more freedom, less Brussels), “Stoppt Mercosur” (Stop Mercosur): German farmers joined the demonstration, with the same demands, specifies the same source.
“The goal is to remind the parliamentarians who are sitting today that Mercosur is not a good thing for French, or even European, agriculture,” declared Paul Fritsch, president of the Rural Coordination of Bas- Rhine cited by the same media.
“We are asking for food sovereignty, that the food we consume be produced locally,” he stressed.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced on December 6 the conclusion of negotiations for an EU-Mercosur agreement but this agreement must still be ratified, recalls the French media.
It would allow the EU, already Mercosur’s leading trading partner (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia), to more easily export its cars, machines and pharmaceutical products. On the other hand, it would allow the South American countries concerned by the agreement (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay) to sell meat, sugar, rice, honey and soya to Europe. ..
France considers this agreement “unacceptable” and considers that Mercosur farmers must respect the environmental and health standards in force in the EU, to avoid “unfair competition”, finally notes “le Parisien”.
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