EU likely to delay free-trade deal with South America as French farmers block roads

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PARIS (AP) — French farmers are driving opposition to a massive transatlantic trade deal between five South American nations of the Mercosur bloc and the 27-nation European Union that officials say will likely lead to its delay.

Farmers turned out across France with heavy tractors this week to build makeshift barricades and block roads, tried and tested methods of pressuring the French government that have previously proved successful in winning concessions.

They are incensed by the planned free-trade deal between the EU and the five active Mercosur countries — Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia — that would progressively remove duties on almost all goods traded between the two blocs over the next 15 years.

The accord has been under negotiation for 25 years, and once ratified would cover a market of 780 million people and a quarter of the globe’s gross domestic product.

EU lawmakers voted Tuesday to advance the deal by adding new safeguards to it in addition to approving concessions to farmers made by the European Commission. It is still likely to be delayed because three key demands from the French have not yet been met.

In France, an agricultural powerhouse, farmers’ concerns about the Mercosur trade deal are combining with anger about government sanitary measures against the spread of a bovine disease, creating a volatile cocktail of rural discontent and growing protest.

Speaking to The Associated Press on Tuesday from a tractor blockade on a highway leading into Paris, aspiring farmer Loic Rivière said he was fighting for his ambition of setting up his own cereal or vegetable farm.

“We want to protect our future,” he said. “What we face isn’t the same as our parents. There’s more competition, more globalization, more diseases” affecting crops and animals.

Scattered cases in France of lumpy skin disease, a viral cattle disease previously confined to sub-Saharan Africa and mainly transmitted by insect bites, are inflaming emotions in farming communities, after government officials ordered the culling of infected herds.

About 30 tractors blocked the RN12 highway heading toward Paris at the protest Tuesday that Riviere was part of, he said. French media reporting from other demonstrations around the country this week showed farmers piling up potatoes, tires, straw bales and other things they had at hand to make barricades. Some were set on fire, creating dramatic television images of flames and smoke that gave an impression of bubbling rural fury, even though some of the protests were relatively small and scattered.

Motorists showed their support for the protesting farmers by tooting their horns, Rivière said.

Farmers “are fed up of not being listened to,” he said. “What we do is the foundation of life but obstacles are being thrown in our way.”

Some of those farmers will continue on to join a march on Brussels as leaders gather for a much-anticipated summit of EU leaders grappling with the Mercosur deal and funding Ukraine.

Worried by a surging far right that rallies support by criticizing the deal, the French have demanded safeguards to monitor and stop large economic disruption in the EU, increased regulations in the South American partner nations like pesticide restrictions, and more inspections of imports at EU ports.

“Today we don’t see them (the safeguards), that’s why we’ve asked for a delay,” said Benjamin Haddad, France’s Minister of European Affairs ahead of a meeting in Brussels. He called on the bloc to “stop being naive” and to protect European agriculture from “unfair competition" by adopting assertive trade policies styled after Washington and Beijing.

“This is what the Americans do, this is what the Chinese do, and so, we need to be open, but we also need to protect ourselves and protect our interests and basically ensure a level playing field,” Haddad said.

France is joined by other EU nations with large agricultural sectors critical of the deal — including Poland and Ireland.

The “Irish government has some concerns,” said Thomas Byrne, Ireland’s Minister of State for European Affairs and Defence. “The indications that I have at the moment is that it will be delayed until January.”

Yet there was clear support for the Mercosur deal among EU lawmakers. They voted 431-161, with 70 abstentions, to advance the deal.

“The Mercosur trade agreement will strengthen Europe’s geopolitical position. It will make us less dependent on China, on Russia and the moods of Donald Trump. It is the clear signal to the world the EU is a reliable partner,” said Svenja Hahn, a German MEP with the center-right Renew Europe coalition.

Philipp Lausberg, an analyst at the European Policy Centre, argued that delays now could risk the deal itself as more right-wing governments come into power in the EU. The deal would help the EU secure markets for its exports and key imports like rare earths, but “if they don’t do it now, then the chances of it going through are waning,” he said.

Bernd Lange, a German lawmaker, said that not signing would be "geopolitically irresponsible and economical nonsense.”

“Some other powers that like to portray us as irrelevant would then rub their hands with glee,” he said. "The finish line for is now in sight and we should cross it.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is determined to sign the agreement, but needs the backing of at least two-thirds of member countries. It remains unclear whether France could find enough allies to veto her signature.

Despite the likelihood of a delay, von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa are still scheduled to sign the deal in Brazil on Saturday.

___ McNeil reported from Brussels.