“We want to be sovereign,” the French Prime Minister launched this Thursday, Gabriel Attalin an intervention in which he promised numerous protectionist measures to quell the historic farmer protests throughout France.
The government’s “desire” to strengthen the conditions of local producers does not end there: it also committed to including the concept of food sovereignty in French legislation and agriculture as “fundamental interest of the Nation.”
“We want to be sovereign, sovereign to cultivate. Sovereigns to harvest. Sovereigns to feed ourselves,” said Attal, who – as if the message of concessions to agriculture were not clear – added that there will be “two slogans for agriculture: produce and protect.”
The strong commitment that the government of Emmanuel Macron in Francewhere the highways are still occupied by hundreds of tractors, takes place no less than hours before the start of a summit of the European Union (EU).
The EU meeting is called to analyze aid to Ukraine in his war with Russia, but undoubtedly France It will put on the table the agrarian protests that have already spread to other countries in the bloc. A sign of how far Macron is willing to go to put out the fire is that he promised to discuss the quota of Ukrainian grain that his country imports, when the Ukrainian cause was one of the main flags in his second Presidency.
As a prelude, the French Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maireadvanced Paris’ willingness to wage a “pulse” with the European Comission (EC, executive body of the European Union), against the signing of the agreement with the Mercosur in its current form.
The signing of the trade deal, which has been going on for no more and no less than 25 years, was the kick-off of the demonstrations by French farmers who, however, have now extended their demands to the way of doing business within the EU.
This is not the first time France puts the agreement between Mercosur and the EU on timeout, although it does seem to be the time in which it delivers the final blow, given the magnitude of the protectionist commitments that the government has just assumed. These include the control in supermarkets of national production stamps, financial aid for livestock and wine producers, and even the fight at the European level to limit synthetic meat permits, among others.
In the past the excuse for delay was caring for the environment and the fight against climate change. They were times of the COP21 in Paris and a denier in charge of the largest South American economy, Jair Bolsonarowho authorized deforestation to record levels of the Amazon.
At European level, the position of France could quickly find allies, with tractors in the streets putting pressure on the governments of Belgium, Spain and Portugal.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the Mercosur wait impatiently Argentina With the still debuting government of Javier Milei, he has demonstrated his intention to close the agreement as soon as possible. Brazilwe know, is not willing to make so many concessions and Paraguay He seems eager to slam the door.
Uruguay has warned about the obsolescence of these negotiation practices several times. Already last June, before the Mercosur-EU agreement fell into the deepest of its crises, the president Luis Lacalle Pou He categorically stated: “25 years of negotiations is not logical.”
Source: Ambito
