The governments of Italy, Germany and Spain celebrated this Friday (9) the approval, by the Council of the European Union (EU), of the bloc’s trade agreement with Mercosur.
Specifically, Member States voted in favor of signing the interim trade agreement with Mercosur, which is the exclusive competence of the EU and does not require ratification by national parliaments, as well as in favor of signing the final agreement, which will require subsequent approval from all parties.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that her country gave its approval to the agreement after, as it claimed from the beginning, it obtained “very important results” from the European Commission in terms of guarantees for its agricultural sector.
At a press conference, Meloni explained that Italy had not changed its stance regarding the signing of the agreement, and that its support was conditional on obtaining fundamental guarantees for the Italian agricultural sector.
Among them, the premier highlighted “a safeguard mechanism for sensitive products, a compensation fund that can be activated to, naturally, compensate for possible imbalances, and a significant reinforcement of phytosanitary controls at entry”.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz celebrated this Friday the “milestone” represented by the agreement, which, according to him, constitutes an important sign of Europe’s strategic sovereignty and capacity for action.
“With the treaty, we strengthen our economy and trade relations with our partners in South America. This is good for Germany and Europe. However, 25 years of negotiations were too much. Now, it is a matter of quickly concluding the next free trade agreements,” he declared, according to a brief statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
King Felipe VI and Spain’s Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, also celebrated the agreement with Mercosur this Friday.
At the end of the tenth annual meeting of Spanish ambassadors, held in Madrid, Albares classified as “extraordinary news” the fact that “finally the European Union said yes to Mercosur” and recalled that Spanish diplomacy had been “pushing and working for a long time” in favor of this agreement, for which he said he was “very happy”.
Felipe VI encouraged diplomats to “develop the full potential of the agreement with Mercosur”, which “is so important for the European Union” and “certainly” for Spain. “Without a doubt, today we are to be congratulated in this sense”, added the king.
The day, however, was not just one of celebration in Europe: farmers have been holding protests against the agreement since Thursday (8) in various parts of the continent, such as in front of the European Parliament, in Brussels, on several highways in France, in Warsaw, Poland, and in the center of Milan.
In the Italian city, they blocked traffic in the region with tractors and bales of straw to protest against the agreement, with phrases such as “By misselling agriculture, they betray Italy” or “Screw the EU, not Mercosur”.
