Will the EU-Mercosur agreement eventually receive a European green light … and especially in what way? Uncertainty occurs around the commercial agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur countries of South America, including Argentina and Brazil, two agricultural giants.
In exchange for our cars and our spirits, the text opens the path to reduction or even the elimination of customs duties in a certain number of agricultural productions, including beef, poultry and sugar, and this same agricultural issue influences discussions among Europeans.
The European Commission, promoted by certain countries such as Germany or Spain, fierce defenders of the commercial agreement, hopes to quickly obtain its signature. But part of the Member States, France and Poland in mind, they want to obstruct it in the current state of the text, hell for the protests of their national farmers. Paris, whose Minister of Agriculture multiplies trips in neighboring capitals, affirms the insertion of “clause reflexes” in the text to be acceptable and set your signature at the bottom of the document.
“Strategically good”
If he judged him “strategically good,” Emmanuel Macron recently said he was ready to sign the text if he included these famous “mirror clauses.” “We, in Europe, put rules for our peasants. We told them:” You should no longer use such phytosanitary products to produce because it is not good for climate, for biodiversity or for human health ” […]. If you want to produce in Mercosur and import these products to Europe, you must make the same rules, “said the head of state in an interview on Brazilian television in early June.
These “mirror clauses” would avoid competition distortions between the two Atlantic banks, avoiding export to Europe from Latin American agricultural productions that would not respect European health, environmental and social standards, despite the fact that European farmers are subject to it. The entry of these agricultural products in the old continent would be conditioned to the fulfillment of European standards.
The term “mirror clauses” is often related to two different tools, although close. The “mirror measures” are provisions inserted in European regulations and that apply to all imports from other countries outside the EU, regardless of the third country. This is, for example, the prohibition of animal products treated with growth hormones since the 1990s or the anti-festation regulations that will be applied at the end of 2025. The list of “mirrors” in agricultural matters is, however, very short.
Growth antibiotics
The “mirror clauses” as such, designate similar provisions that apply only to a commercial agreement, after having been negotiated between the two parties for some specific products, this is what certain countries, in particular, France, in the framework of the EU-Mercosur agreement. The “mirrors clauses” were inserted, for example, in the commercial agreement between the EU and New Zealand, which entered into force in May 2024.
“The use of antibiotic growth promoters is still authorized in third countries, in particular those of Mercosur”, but “this practice, prohibited in the European Union since 2006, is not yet effectively prohibited for imported products in the EU,” underlines a report from the Foundation for Nature and Man, the interprograpion of the French bovine sector (Interbebev) and the Vogile Institute, published in Febreradides. Those prohibited in Europe are also mentioned, as well as certain agricultural practices prohibited in European soil.
“Letting believe that the measures of the mirror measures or the safeguard clauses could still be introduced while the negotiations are completed and would be enough to appease the concerns is only to aggravate the feeling of injustice and abandonment that is felt in the field,” Fensea, the first French agricultural union, in a press release, in a press release.
“Imperfect” traceability
These mirror clauses are really difficult to implement. The traceability of agricultural production, even more for agricultural productions in countries where the requirements are less strong, is not infallible. A European audit had revealed insufficient controls of beef in Brazil, where the absence of the prohibited estradiol hormone in Europe is not guaranteed.
“In theory, the meat treated with antibiotics and growth hormones cannot enter, but in practice the traceability is imperfect,” said Stefan Ambec, an economist of the Inrae Research Institute, with AFP in November 2024. “” There are massacre auditations organized with the European Commission, but we do not easily follow the cattle before this stage “, he observed that” it will be born in Mercosur in Mercosur in Mercosur. Only that resists a birth in Mercosur, only exists, only the birth of Mercosur, only that birth resists in Mercosur, only resists in Mercosur.
Source: BFM TV
