Fears that the Mercosur trade deal will devastate the Irish beef industry will turn out to be “unfounded”, the Republic’s EU commissioner Michael McGrath has said.
The free trade agreement negotiated between the European Commission and the South American bloc was the “strongest deal possible”, and included solid safeguards protecting Irish farmers, said the former Fianna Fáil minister.
The controversial deal will lower tariffs and other barriers to trade between EU countries and Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, opening up a significant new South American market for European industry.
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Farmers have fiercely opposed the trade agreement, fearing exports of Irish beef will suffer in the face of competition from cheaper South American steaks and burgers produced to lower standards.
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Speaking to The Irish Times, Mr McGrath said he believed the farming sector had concerns that were “genuinely expressed,” but the worst fears about the deal would be “unfounded”.
Mr McGrath, EU commissioner for consumer protection, said the trade deal would be a “net positive overall” for the Republic as an export-driven economy and would also end up benefiting agriculture.
“The concern of the agri-food sector will not crystallise in the fullness of time,” he said.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen signed the Mercosur trade deal in Paraguay on Saturday. The agreement was backed by a large number of EU states, providing a big enough majority for its approval, despite the opposition of the Republic, France, Poland, Austria and Hungary.
“There’s no denying that there is disappointment within the commission at Ireland’s No vote,” said Mr McGrath.
Commission negotiators had worked “very hard” to strengthen the proposed trade agreement and tighten protections for farmers, he said. The deal includes an emergency brake that the EU can pull to reimpose steep tariffs if South American beef is found to be flooding any part of the market and causing a drop in prices.
The commission has separately said dairy farmers could be one of the winners out of the deal, selling into the South American market.
The trade pact still needs to be ratified by MEPs in the European Parliament before it comes into full effect. That vote is expected in the coming weeks and will be very tight. “We’re not taking the vote in the European Parliament for granted,” said Mr McGrath.
He said he was not aware of any talk about a “quid pro quo” between the recent leeway the commission granted Ireland on nitrates rules around fertiliser spreading and the Government’s vote on the Mercosur deal.
US president Donald Trump’s comments about taking over Greenland, by military force if necessary, needed to be taken seriously, the EU commissioner said. “I’m not going to understate the significance of this moment in EU-US relations,” he said.
Europe had to be assertive in pushing back on Mr Trump’s ambitions to buy or seize the self-autonomous Arctic island from Denmark.
A US military intervention to take Greenland by force would set a “potentially very dangerous” precedent and create a crisis for the Nato military alliance that had been the “bedrock” of the international order for decades, said Mr McGrath.
At the weekend, Mr Trump threatened to effectively tear up separate tariff deals the White House had struck with the EU and UK, in a serious escalation of the transatlantic diplomatic dispute.
In retaliation for European countries rowing in to support Greenland and Denmark, the US president claimed he would levy an extra 10 per cent tariff on imports from the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
