EU-Mercosur bad for climate and farmers - letter to EU Ministers to block
Today, TAPP Coalition sent this urgent letter to EU presidents, Ministers of Agriculture and Environment and members of EU Parliament (Agri & Envi committees):
Your Honourable Presidents and Ministers of Agriculture and Environment, Member of EU Parliament
Today, the EU Commission signed a controversial trade deal with 5 Mercosur countries. More info: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_6244
TAPP Coalition, a European alliance of food companies, farmers and NGOs representing 7000 European companies and 1,6 million citizens urges EU Member States and EU Parliament to block this deal.
Farmers' organisation COPA is furious, as farmers had street protest among other things, because of this kind of unfair trade deals, which means farmers face cheap imports from South America, with much lower environmental and animal welfare standards and thus unfair competition. The EU Commission claims the deal will not cause deforestation because of EU rules for ‘deforestation-free’ products, but the newspapers are full of how farmers and traders circumvent these rules and deforestation continues, legally and illegally. France, Poland and Austria will not sign the EU-Mercosur deal, and the Dutch parliament recently called again to block the deal. The EU Parliament is also critical.
So it remains to be seen whether the EU-Mercosur deal will actually happen.
The new EU-Mercosur deal says: "The agreement will offer EU industries cheaper high-quality raw materials by reducing or eliminating duties that Mercosur currently imposes on exports to the EU of products such as soybean products (feed for EU livestock)". So it will reduce prices for soy, and this will reduce prices for meat and dairy in the EU, leading to higher consumption, contrary to the Paris Climate Agreement goals and the Farm to Fork Strategy. This EU policy asked for a reduction in EU meat consumption because of public health and climate reasons. Environmental taxes on meat are needed or agri-food ETS for slaughterhouses and dairy factories, not reduced prices for meat and dairy as a result of EU-Mercosur deals.
Previous environmental impact analyses showed the EU-Mercosur deal to be a bad deal for the climate: more meat and soy production in S-America (for the EU market) and more dairy production in Europe for Mercosur, compared to no deal. The previous impact analyses showed the EU-Mercosur trade deal will raise greenhouse gas emissions from trade in just eight farm products by one-third. Research from GRAIN, released 2,5 years ago, shows that the trade pact will boost climate emissions for eight farm products by 8.7 million tonnes per year, one-third more than was produced in 2019. More than 80% of these emissions will come from one product: Mercosur beef. On Europe’s side, emissions from the export of dairy products will rise by 500%.
The current deal is slightly better than before, but still net bad for the climate, because dairy production in Europe will increase (for the Mercosur) and more (cheap) meat from South America will also come to the EU with lower import tariffs (90,000 tonnes of beef, 1.6% of beef production in Europe and 180,000 tonnes of poultry meat from Mercosur, 1.4% of poultry consumption in the EU I just read). The pork trade between the blocks is virtually untaxed and will therefore grow too. In short: there is a brake on EU meat imports, but more (cheap) meat and soy will still come to the EU thanks to the deal.
Strangely, the environmental impact study has not even been published; the EU Commission today says: ‘the Trade Sustainability Assessment (SIA) is under way’.
TAPP Coalition pleaded in the past to introduce CBAM import tariffs on all imports to the EU of meat, dairy and feed produced with lower environmental standards than in the EU itself. A yardstick for this could be an FAO database of greenhouse gas emissions per kg of product. It appears that S-American products score very poorly compared to the EU. Regardless of an Agri-ETS or EU-Mercosur deal the EU Commission should consider CBAM import taxes on meat and dairy and soy to help reduce global emissions from the agriculture sector and protect EU farmers against unfair trade.
With kind regards,
Jeroom Remmers
Director TAPP Coalition
https://tappcoalition.eu
0031 6 22 40 77 12