🔹Nov 15th, 2024: EU Farmers 🚜 are protesting again, this time to oppose the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement, saying increased imports from South America will hurt the European Union's agriculture. Farmers
dragged tractors and waved flags in front of the EU 🇪🇺 headquarters in Brussels,
Belgium 🇧🇪 this week claiming the agreement "does not provide fair prices for farmers."
🔹Mercosur
(The Southern Common Market) is a
customs union comprising of 12 Latin American countries with a free intra-zone trade & a
common trade policy. The EU and Mercosur reached a principled agreement in 2019 after 20 years of FTA negotiations, but stalled after the EU demanded the addition of new conditions, including environmental protection obligations.
🔹The new European Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maroš Šefčovič said the free trade deal
could be "concluded on very very fair ground". A new EU law banning the import of
products linked to the destruction of the world's forests has been controversial, though its implementation is on the verge of being put off for another year.
🔹In Ireland 🇮🇪, farmers have
been protesting outside the Dáil, calling on all elected representatives to oppose the EU-Mercosur trade agreement. Europe's Copa and Cogeca, which
represent farmers and agricultural co-ops have voiced opposition. Poland's 🇵🇱 agriculture ministry has
registered reservations about the deal.
🔹Protests in Aurillac, in southern France 🇫🇷, was the start of a fresh wave
expected to spread amid concern that the deal could be
finalized at the G20 summit in Brazil 🇧🇷 on Nov. 18-19 despite the French minister of agriculture, Annie Genevard, saying it was “highly unlikely." A
group of more than 600 French lawmakers also published an open letter in claiming that the conditions for the deal “have not been met."
🔹 The EU have seen lots of farmer protests in the last year for various reasons. In
Poland and Romania,
they protested against cheap pesticide contaminated grain from Ukraine,
removal of subsidies in Germany angered farmers, Lithuanian farmers forced to
restore permanent grasslands, Dutch farmers protested
nitrogen policies that would
restrict livestock farming.Video Source:
EuroNews