The Government may well be facing a storm of protests from farming organisations and Opposition parties in the coming weeks over the Mercosur trade agreement, which seems likely to be concluded soon, after 25 years in the making.
The deal, between the EU and South American countries including Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, will open market access each way, offering opportunities for European exporters and vice versa. Irish and European beef farmers fear the arrival of cheap South American meat, which they say is subject to less stringent environmental and health standards.
The Coalition pledged in its programme for government to oppose the deal as then constituted. Since then some adjustments have been made, though they will not be enough to satisfy the beef lobby and its allies. At the most recent EU summit in Brussels, Taoiseach Micheál Martin seemed to indicate a softening of Ireland’s opposition to the deal, signalling that the Government would view it as part of a range of agriculture issues – including the recently successfully extended derogation on the EU nitrates directive. The subtext of Martin’s comments seemed to be: Ireland cannot get everything it wants on every issue.
And Ireland’s opposition is unlikely to be decisive anyway. Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni seems ready to back the deal, signalling just before Christmas that she would seek to reassure Italian farmers that the deal would not be harmful to their interests. Without Italy, there is no “blocking minority” of member states that can hold up the agreement, which is subject to qualified majority voting rules, rather than unanimity.
RM Block
That will present political difficulties for the Government, at least some of its own making. Successive administrations have been reluctant to make the case for free trade agreements. This is despite the clear benefits that free trade – now threatened by the policies of Donald Trump – have brought this country. It may be late to make the case for free trade, but in the case of Mercosur the Government may have no other option.
