Politico | 17 December 2025
EU agrees on tougher Mercosur safeguards in bid to placate Italy, France
By Camille Gijs
BRUSSELS — The EU institutions agreed Wednesday to strengthen protections for European farmers under a trade deal with the Mercosur bloc, in an eleventh-hour push to rally heavyweights France and Italy into backing the controversial pact.
The European Parliament, EU member countries and the European Commission approved a supplementary text that would reimpose tariffs if Latin American poultry and beef imports destabilize European markets.
Agreement on the additional safeguards comes on the eve of an EU leaders’ summit at which pro-Mercosur countries, led by Germany, want finally to get French President Emmanuel Macron to drop his opposition and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to come off the fence and back the deal after 25 years of talks.
The compromise, reached at a lightning round of interinstitutional talks, split the difference between a Commission proposal to investigate market turbulence and an amended version proposed by the Parliament that foresaw a tighter trigger and a shorter timeline to complete any investigation.
But there was no agreement on the Parliament’s request to include a more contentious “reciprocity obligation” clause in the final instrument, which would have required Mercosur countries to meet EU food production standards in return for market access.
That clause was a red line for several EU countries and the European Commission, which warned it would have undermined the agreed text of the trade agreement that Ursula von der Leyen shook hands on a year ago with the leaders of Mercosur, which groups Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Is it enough?
The big question now is whether the compromise will placate Macron and Meloni.
Both said on the eve of the summit that a final vote by EU member countries on the Mercosur deal should be delayed to allow time to review the safeguards deal and reassure their respective farming constituencies. A major farmer protest is planned in Brussels on Thursday.
Germany, meanwhile, is turning up the heat on the holdouts, with a senior party ally of Chancellor Friedrich Merz saying that Berlin won’t be able to keep up its big net contributions to the EU budget without the help of the economic growth that trade deals like Mercosur help to drive.
“Germany is an export nation, from which, incidentally, all other EU countries also benefit,” Sepp Müller, deputy chairman of Merz’s conservative parliamentary group in the Bundestag, said on Wednesday.
Although Mercosur is not on the agenda of the EU summit in Brussels, it will be a major talking point for leaders. Denmark, which chairs the Council of the EU, wants to hold a final vote by ambassadors on the overall trade deal on Friday. A qualified majority — of 15 countries representing 65 percent of the EU population — would be needed for it to go through.
Only then would von der Leyen be able to fly to Brazil on Saturday, as is now planned, to finally sign the deal to create a free-trade area of more than 700 million people and eliminate more than 90 percent of duties.
Fair compromise
Negotiators at Wednesday’s three-way talks took less than four hours to shake hands on the compromise deal.
They settled on requiring the Commission to investigate surges of beef or poultry from Mercosur countries as soon as imports rise by more than 8 percent from a three-year average, and if those imports are priced at least 8 percent below comparable EU products.
That split the difference between the two proposals on the table. The original Commission proposal foresaw a 10 percent threshold in both cases, while at a plenary vote on Tuesday in Strasbourg, European lawmakers had backed tighter, 5 percent thresholds.
Bernd Lange, the chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee, called Wednesday’s deal a “fair compromise.”
The German Social Democrat added that the deal “gives security and predictability for the agricultural sector in Europe without harming our partnership with the Mercosur countries.”
Critics of the safeguards compromise were not appeased.
Saskia Bricmont, one of the Green lawmakers leading the charge against the accord, called it “a masquerade, a face-saving communication exercise that in reality fools no one.”
The safeguards “will not provide real protection against imports from countries that do not apply similar health, social, and environmental standards. Only reciprocity could have addressed this problem, but it is merely the subject of a political declaration with no effect,” the Belgian MEP added.
With European leaders preoccupied at the Brussels summit with difficult talks around funding Ukraine, and farmers planning a show of strength at their protest, it’s far from clear that a final agreement on the overall deal can be reached.
For that to happen, Meloni at least would have to drop her reservations. That’s a step that Italy watchers don’t rule out, as she plays the Mercosur card to seek concessions on EU farm spending in the next long-term EU budget.
Delay could be fatal to the accord, warns the pro-deal camp.
And President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Mercosur’s anchor economy, said on Wednesday he would no longer sign off on the deal if it is not finalized this month.
“If we don’t do it now, Brazil won’t make this deal anymore as long as I’m president,” Reuters quoted Lula telling a cabinet meeting. “If they say no, we will be tough with them from now on. We gave in to everything that diplomacy could possibly concede.”
