MEP Luke Flanagan has once again called out the hypocrisy and double-speak of those in favour of the Mercosur deal. The “so-called safeguard clause that was promoted as being the protector of farmers in Europe has already been shown, before the ink is even dry, to be not worth the paper it is written on”.
In the run-up to the vote in the European Parliament, he was clear in his opinion that the safeguard clause was never intended to protect farmers. “The safeguard clause was set up to fail, riddled with vague language and thresholds that are difficult to meet and impossible to quantify. Any measures to protect farmer incomes are reactive, after the event—after EU producers have been destroyed—and will take months to implement. It has been put in place to give political cover to spineless MEPs to vote in favour of the deal while at the same time saying they have protected farmers. Unfortunately, many MEPs naively bought into the spin and voted through the safeguard clause, thus paving the way for the ratification of Mercosur at the recent Council of Ministers meeting”.
“It is now clear that the safeguard clause is worthless. The Mercosur bloc is quite clear they will not accept any of the stipulations or parameters contained in the safeguard clause”. Paraguay’s Foreign Minister Rubén Ramírez, who holds the rotating presidency of the South American bloc, has thrown out the safeguard measures designed to support European farmers approved by the European Commission, stating: “they are not part of the historic free trade agreement signed in Montevideo in December last year. Therefore, these clauses should not be included.”
In their view, they negotiated a deal with the EU; the terms and conditions of the deal are contained in the text of the deal. They reject completely a separate text that they had no input to or knowledge of. In their view, bringing in new restrictions on import/export quantities would be a breach of the agreement.
MEPs in the EP have two opportunities to delay and ultimately stop the deal, said Mr Flanagan: “firstly, we will vote in plenary on whether to refer the deal to the ECJ (European Court of Justice) to see if it is compatible with EU law, which would delay it by up to 2 years. Secondly, we will have a final vote on the deal itself, yes or no. Farmers and the wider public should demand that MEPs whom they elected should reflect the views of their constituents and not act as pawns for multinational corporations in these critical votes.”
“While many try to play down the economic significance of the deal, citing figures that the new quota of 99,000 tons of beef granted to Mercosur constitutes only 1% of EU production and the effects will be negligible on EU farmers, this is flawed analysis. The figure of 1% is wrong; on a like-for-like basis, the figure is closer to 6%, but the real issue here is the lack of understanding of what a small increase of any magnitude can do. Beef farmers need look no further than what would be regarded as their well-to-do cousins in the dairy sector. A 2% oversupply in milk deliveries has brought about a 30% drop in returns to the farmer in the last 12 months. In international commodity trading, market sentiment is important currency. The perception of a glut in supply can drive down prices to unsustainable levels.”
Concluding, Mr Flanagan said: “My position on the deal has been crystal clear from the start: we do not want the Mercosur deal, we do not need the Mercosur deal. It is a bad deal for farmers, for the environment, for wider society and for worker rights in both the EU and South America. It defies any logic to be transporting agricultural products thousands of miles around the globe when they can be produced locally in a sustainable manner, supporting local farmers and the wider rural economy.”