LThe head of the Spanish government, Pedro Sanchez, and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will arrive at the summit organized between the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States [Celac] of 17 and 18 July with the same objective: the adoption of the agreement between the EU and Mercosur [Argentine, Brésil, Paraguay et Uruguay], whose negotiations ended in 2019. France, along with others, will have the difficult but necessary role of opposing it. This is the sense of the resolution adopted by the National Assembly on June 13, carried forward by the deputies of nine political groups.
We sent an unequivocal signal to Brussels: we cannot, in 2023, give up our environmental, health and social requirements to obtain favorable economic conditions of exchange. This agreement, negotiated between 2000 and 2019, is tainted by its obsolescence. His signature would break the acceptability of foreign trade a little more by French society, in an environment where many voices are raised to close themselves completely to it.
Let’s start by giving the evil a name: trade treaties are increasingly despised. Discussions about Tafta [accord de libre-échange entre l’UE et les Etats-Unis] and Ceta [accord économique et commercial global entre l’UE et le Canada] have shown: from our agricultural rural areas to our urban youth, opposition is numerous and environmental, health and ethical concerns are growing.
Vitality of our PGI, AOC and AOP
In 2020, 51% of the French prone to protectionism! Unfair competition, the source of so many fantasies, is the fiercest enemy of free trade. However, the current EU-Mercosur agreement creates unfair terms of trade: it would allow 99,000 carcass equivalent tonnes of South American beef to be imported into France without customs duties. Livestock potentially bred with antibiotics, banned in France since 1um January 2006. In this case, how can we ask our farmers to resist, and how can we find buyers for the third of our farms whose operator will retire in the next ten years?
Among young French people, 60% identify the environment as their main concern. How do you explain to them when the European Union is adopting a text that would cause an annual increase of more than 5% in deforestation in the Amazon? Finally, how can we justify that France, which hosted COP21 and used its best diplomatic skills to reach the Paris Agreement, today accepts a text that does not make compliance with it an essential clause?
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