Rome believes that “the signing can only take place provided that adequate protections and compensation in the event of imbalances for the agricultural sector” are put in place.
“The conditions are not met” to sign the free trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur as it stands, Italian government sources said on Thursday. This position comes as the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is expected at the summit of Mercosur countries which opened Thursday in Montevideo to advance the free trade agreement with the EU, in discussions for over 20 years.
“The Italian government considers that the conditions are not met to subscribe to the current text,” say these government sources. Rome believes that “the signing can only take place provided that adequate protections and compensation in the event of imbalances for the agricultural sector” are put in place.
“Firstly, we must ensure that European standards on veterinary and phytosanitary controls are fully respected and, more generally, that products entering the internal market fully respect our standards of consumer protection and quality controls.”
France is at the forefront in the fight against this agreement, and President Emmanuel Macron “reiterated” to Ursula von der Leyen that a signature is “unacceptable as it stands”.
“A rapid and effective compensation system” in the event of “disruptions on the market”
According to Italian government sources, Rome intends to require in order to reach an agreement “a firm commitment from the Commission to constantly monitor the risk of disruptions in the market and, in such a case, to activate a rapid and effective compensation system”.
“A possible Italian green light for the signing of the agreement by the EU therefore remains conditional on the provision of concrete and effective measures to take into account the concerns of the European agricultural sector,” concludes Rome.
Under the European treaties, the Commission is the sole negotiator of trade agreements on behalf of the Twenty-Seven. Once a possible text is signed with the Mercosur countries, it will have to obtain its ratification by winning the approval of at least 15 member states representing 65% of the EU population, then by gathering a majority in the European Parliament. To prevent the adoption of the text, France needs to rally three other countries representing more than 35% of the EU population, a threshold which would be easily crossed with the support of Rome and Warsaw, which has already expressed its opposition to the project “in this form”.
