Sefcovic: European Farmers Shouldn't Worry About EU's Deal with Mercosur

Brussels, December 11 (TASR-correspondent) - European farmers needn't worry about any potential negative impact of the new EU-Mercosur free trade agreement, European Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maros Sefcovic has stated in an interview with Slovak media in Brussels.

Last week, in Montevideo, Uruguay, Slovakia's European Commissioner, alongside President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, negotiated the signing of the free trade agreement. European farmers from France, Italy and Poland have already voiced their concerns about the agreement in protests in Brussels on Monday.

Sefcovic said that there was no need to worry. According to him, this is the biggest ever partnership between the EU and Mercosur countries in terms of investment.

"We're talking about more than 700 million consumers, a huge level of trade that exceeds €84 billion a year. We expect that this agreement will also increase trade volumes by 20 to 30 percent," he said. He reassured both European and Slovak farmers that the EC took a very cautious approach to sensitive commodities in the agreement.

For sensitive commodities such as beef and chicken imports, quotas have been set at 1.4-1.5 percent of European consumption. If beef consumption is over six million tonnes per year, the import quota for all four Mercosur countries will be 99,000 tonnes. That is roughly two steaks per EU resident per year," Sefcovic explained.

The agreement also includes a so-called "handbrake", a mechanism to prevent imbalances in the EU single market caused by imports of agri-commodities from Mercosur countries. In practice, this would mean halting imports of commodities that threaten the EU market, and the EC is also preparing specific financial measures for such situations, he said.