European Union countries are expected to vote early next week on whether the bloc should sign a controversial trade deal with Mercosur by the end of the year, Denmark, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, announced on Friday.
The EU and the bloc made up of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay reached an agreement last December to create the EU’s biggest trade deal, some 25 years after negotiations began. However, France and other EU countries have expressed reservations, fearing that increased imports could harm their farmers.
The European Commission, which negotiated the deal, is seeking approval from EU members so that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen can travel to Brazil to sign it.
“In the Danish presidency’s planning, the intention is to hold a vote on the agreement with Mercosur next week to allow the President of the Commission to sign the agreement in Brazil on December 20. This has not changed,” a Danish presidency official said on Friday.
The outcome is uncertain. Approval requires a qualified majority of 15 EU members, representing 65% of the EU population. Germany, Spain and the Nordic countries are clearly in favor. However, Poland has said it will oppose the deal, while the positions of France and Italy are unclear. If these three countries, plus one other, vote against or abstain, the agreement will be rejected.
The EU executive presented the deal for approval in September and sought to ease opposition by adding a mechanism that would suspend Mercosur’s preferential access to certain agricultural products, such as beef, poultry and sugar.
Supporters of the deal, which would be the EU’s biggest ever in terms of tariff cuts, say it is a key part of the EU’s diversification strategy, which seeks new markets and better access to key minerals amid geopolitical disruption in the form of US tariffs and Chinese restrictions on exports of chips and rare earths.
Some European diplomats said France had tried to delay the vote until January and believed now was the time to make or break the deal.
“If we do not sign Mercosur in the coming days, this agreement will be dead,” said a European diplomat. “If we don’t reach an agreement on Mercosur, we will no longer need to talk about European sovereignty. We will lose all geopolitical relevance.”
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