Brazil and France relaunch their bilateral relationship after it was damaged by the disagreements surrounding the Mercosur-European Union (EU) agreementbut under the idea firmly pronounced by the French president Emmanuel Macron that it is necessary to start working on a new free trade agreement (FTA) between the blocks.
“The matter of biodiversity and of climate” will be key in the “new” agreement that Macron intends, and that he proposed to his counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the middle of his visit to Brazil. However, we must not forget that, on the one hand, the chapter that contains these issues are the ones that have brought the most problems to the negotiation that has been going on for 25 years; and that, on the other, French farmers are firmly opposed to the signing of a tariff treaty that the import of agricultural products increases and the European market cannot compete.
In this context, even the talks on a new agreement seem complex, although they allow giving new life to a negotiation that began in 1999, when the European bloc and Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, On the South American side, they began the joint search for the elimination of most customs tariffs between two areas with more than 700 million consumers. From the north, the EU would export cars, machinery and pharmaceutical products, among others; while meat, sugar, rice, honey and soybeans, among others, would leave from the south.
The chronicle of a worn-out negotiation
After 20 years of negotiations, in 2019 a political agreement that, now – and after having been very close to achieving the final signature at the end of last year – the opposition among the 27 countries of the EU, led by France, blocks its definitive adoption.
Germany, automotive industrial power, and Spain They are in favor of signing the agreement, which would open new markets of some 270 million consumers to European companies. However, European nations where the agricultural sector has an important real or cultural weight, such as France, Ireland either Netherlandsthey oppose.
Beyond its economic dimension, “this draft agreement took on a much more important geopolitical dimension” than it could have had in 1999, he observed. Elvire Fabry, researcher at the european institute Jacques Delores. “Brazil came very close to China, which led to greater political alignment between both countries,” until the signing of an agreement in 2023 to allow trade exchanges in their own currencies, he added.
With that Brazil-China rapprochement background, and a climate transition which necessitates abundant supplies of certain raw materials, the EU has additional incentives to strengthen its trade with South America, a region rich in lithium, copper, iron and cobalt. However, and despite the call of the foreign ministers of the Mercosur to seal the trade agreement as “shortly as possible”, the agreement does not seem to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
French farmers, a main obstacle
In that sense, and through massive protests in the streets, French farmers have presented themselves as a main factor of pressure on Macron who, already, did not agree with the progress of the negotiations with the Mercosur.
The agricultural sectors fear that, in the event of an agreement, the market will be flooded by meat from agricultural powers such as Brazil and Argentina, without respecting European health and production standards. “French ranchers will not be competitive with Brazilian ranchers,” said the economist. Maxime Combes, opposed to this treaty which, according to him, threatens to replace the former with the latter.
He Mercosur-EU agreement provides for beef export quotas to Europe of 99,000 tons of carcass equivalent and the elimination of tariffs on another 60,000 tons of meat imported from the South American regional bloc. This quota is, however, far from the production of beef slaughtered in France, which in 2022 amounted to 1,361 million tons of carcass equivalent, according to data from the Livestock Institute French.
Faced with the agricultural protests that shook France and other European countries in January, Macron reiterated in recent weeks that his country would not approve the deal in its current form. And, in Brazil, he urged the signing of a new one: “As it is currently being negotiated, it is a very bad agreement for you and for us,” he assured.
Pedro Sánchez and Lula da Silva
Photo: @sanchezcastejon
France demands that the agreement reached in 2019 include guarantees on respect for the Paris Agreement on climate and mirror clauses in health and production standards to avoid unfair competition.
Negotiations are still on
In any case, the spokesperson for the European Comission He told AFP on Monday that negotiations are continuing.
In Fabry’s opinion, the community Executive seeks “a negotiation basis that allows us to offer guarantees to France”, in a context of doubts about its adoption method. “Moving forward in this context would be catastrophic,” a diplomatic source commented to AFP, in reference to the agrarian protests in Europe.
The former Brazilian Minister of Commerce Welber Barral, partner of the BMJ company, estimates that “there is a problem of agricultural protectionism” and that “France doesn’t help.”
Meanwhile, from countries of the Mercosur They insist on moving forward with the agreement. “The internal problems of each country should in no way be transferred to potential international trade agreements,” he said in February from Rome the Argentine chancellor Diana Mondinowho asked that “we not use these treaties as a scapegoat.”
Source: Ambito
