O Acordo de Parceria UE-Mercosul prevê a criação da maior zona de comércio livre do mundo. Foram necessários 25 anos para chegar a um acordo que está agora a ser ratificado. No entanto, o processo criado pela Comissão Europeia está a ser contestado por vários setores.
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00:33There are also a few member states highly skeptical of the deal,
00:38like we will reveal in this EU Decoded.
00:41Mercosur is a South American trade bloc comprised of Argentina,
00:45Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
00:48The agreement with the EU will create a market of 780 million consumers,
00:54representing 25% of world trade.
00:58Many European products now pay high export tariffs to the Mercosur bloc,
01:03such as cars 35%, wine and spirits up to 35%, cheese 28%, machinery up to 20%.
01:14With the deal, those tariffs will be eliminated or significantly reduced.
01:19Farmers, environmentalists, some groups in the European Parliament and a few member states
01:25oppose the deal.
01:26We'll explore this later in the program, but let's hear what some Europeans think.
01:31In fact, it's in my concurrence, especially with the French industry and its agriculture,
01:35with the South American industry, which produce with different norms, with a lot lower cost.
01:43You can't, on one side, have a sovereign alimentary power, and on the other side, sacrifice
01:47the peasants, the peasants.
01:49That it's good, because our partners on the world, with whom we've always been working
01:54in the same way, the things are not so clear as before.
01:58But I think it's also geregelt, that the, let's say, from the agriculture, the same
02:02Anspruchs as we have here, our landowners.
02:05The whole agreement contains parts such as the political part, which have to be ratified
02:33by national and regional parliaments.
02:36It is a risky undertaking, because if the whole agreement is ratified by national parliaments,
02:42it means that some of them may oppose the text, as it happened already in the past, when
02:48national parliaments such as the Dutch one or the Austrian one opposed the agreements.
02:54So the European Commission has decided to separate the trade part, which falls under the exclusive
02:59competence of the EU, so that the Council will vote the text, the Member States voting by
03:06qualified majority, and the text will be also voted by the European Parliament by simple
03:11majority.
03:12This way, the trade part has more chances to be implemented quickly.
03:17Which Member States are more sceptical of this agreement?
03:20Why is that?
03:21And how many do we need, in terms of vote, for this agreement to be approved and enter into
03:28force?
03:28France has long led the opposition to the agreement on the ground that it would create unfair competition
03:35to its farmers.
03:37But it may have changed today, because the European Commission has given assurances that it would
03:43strengthen controls over imports coming from Mercosur countries and their impact on the EU
03:50markets.
03:51But Poland now is stepping up against the deal.
03:56Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he was opposed to the agreement.
04:00But it remains uncertain whether he is going to be able to gather a blocking minority against
04:07the deal.
04:08Because indeed, to be signed, the deal requires 15 Member States in favor of it, and a blocking
04:15minority would require five Member States representing 35% of the population.
04:20The agricultural sector is one of the biggest critics of the agreement, which is why the European Commission recently added safeguards.
04:29Quotas that limit the import of products considered more sensitive, such as beef, poultry, sugar, rice, and honey.
04:38Increased controls that may lead to the suspension of imports of a certain product if they increase
04:44by more than 10% or prices fall by more than 10%.
04:48EU pesticide and animal welfare rules will have to be followed by Mercosur countries.
04:54A 6.3 billion euros fund to help farmers affected by market crises.
05:00I'm joined now by Karel Lennon, Chief Executive of the Center for European Policy Studies.
05:07Can the EU afford not to ratify this agreement considering that it had to make a lot of concessions in the trade deal with the US that will raise tariffs to 15%?
05:20We need to know, let's say, that the geopolitical situation since it started to negotiate 25 years ago until today has changed so much.
05:28If we go to Latin America, and we see this also for Mercosur, the most important trading partner has become China.
05:33So if we know, say, we need to be respected as a partner also, for example, with the United States,
05:41then we should respect ourselves and say we absolutely need to conclude this agreement also to become a more important trading partner for Latin America.
05:49And if we were not to do this, I mean, it will just, after this, I would say, almost scandalous EU-US agreement,
05:56just put the EU in a corner of being an unreliable partner.
06:01The partnership will also create access to the essential raw materials as an alternative to China that concentrates a lot of that production.
06:10So how significant is this for the European industry, for instance?
06:14It's, again, an opportunity for us, I mean, to reduce, I mean, drastically this huge dependence which we have from China,
06:22which was built up without us noticing it.
06:25And now we have an opportunity to say, look, we'll do it with another region.
06:28We will just reduce our huge exposure to China and to say, look, we will make sure that Brazil can, or say, Argentina or Peru can also develop their commodities,
06:39or say, their raw materials export to Europe.
06:42So in addition to MECASU, the EU has also revised an agreement with Mexico.
06:47So where should the EU look next for partners?
06:51We should, above all, as a policy, after what the US has done to us, let's say, in this trade agreement from the 18th of August,
06:59make sure that we find a group of countries which have the similar approach to trade and to the maintenance, above all,
07:08of the trading system, which we have in the post-World War II order, where we go for a system, underscored by the WTO,
07:16the World Trade Organization, where we apply these principles of most favoured nation clause,
07:22and where we want to have, as the EU wants, as much as possible, zero tariffs.
07:26International trade is one of the arenas in which the EU projects its political and economic model.
07:33Some tout economic benefits and new markets, while others warn about the risks of more concessions to multinationals,
07:41increasing risks of deforestation in Amazonia, and consumer losses.
07:46Given the tariffs recently imposed by the US on the bloc,
07:50some European governments most critical of the agreement with Mercosul may now change their minds.
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