{"id":883433,"date":"2026-01-08T05:27:56","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T11:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/08\/eu-delays-free-trade-deal-mercosur-with-latam-after-farmer-agitation-political-protests-in-france-italy\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T05:27:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T11:27:56","slug":"eu-delays-free-trade-deal-mercosur-with-latam-after-farmer-agitation-political-protests-in-france-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/08\/eu-delays-free-trade-deal-mercosur-with-latam-after-farmer-agitation-political-protests-in-france-italy\/","title":{"rendered":"EU delays free-trade deal Mercosur with LatAm after farmer agitation, political protests in France, Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The European Union is delaying a massive free-trade deal with South American countries after fiery protests by farmers and last-minute opposition by France and Italy threatened to derail the pact, seen by its backers as an important geopolitical move for both continents.<\/p>\n

Top EU officials had hoped to sign the EU-Mercosur deal in Brazil this weekend, after 26 years of negotiations. Instead, European Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho confirmed that the signature had been put off until January.<\/p>\n

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Experts say the delay could dent the EU\u2019s negotiating credibility globally as it seeks to forge new trade ties amid commercial tensions with the U.S. and China. Once ratified, the trade deal would cover a market of 780 million people and a quarter of the globe\u2019s gross domestic product, and progressively remove duties on almost all goods traded between the two blocs.<\/p>\n

French farmers unions, who fear the deal would undercut their livelihoods, welcomed the postponement. France had led opposition to the deal between the EU and the five active Mercosur countries \u2014 Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. Italy raised new reservations Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s agreement for a delay was reached between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa on the sidelines of an EU summit with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, on the condition that Italy would vote in favor of the agreement in January, an EU official said.<\/p>\n

The decision came hours after farmers in tractors blocked roads and set off fireworks in Brussels to protest the trade deal, prompting police to respond with tear gas and water cannons.<\/p>\n

The farmers brought potatoes and eggs to throw and waged a furious back-and-forth with police. Protesters burned tires and a faux wooden coffin bearing the word \u201cAgriculture.\u201d Their fire unleashed a black cloud that swirled with white tear gas. The European Parliament evacuated some staff due to damage caused by protesters.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe are fighting to defend our jobs,\u201d said Armand Chevron, a 23-year old French farmer.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of farmers like Pierre Vromann, 60, had arrived on tractors, which they parked to block roads around the key institutions of the EU.<\/p>\n

The Mercosur deal would be \u201cbad for farmers, bad for consumers, bad for citizens and bad for Europe,\u201d said Vromann, who raises cattle and grains in the nearby Belgian city of Waterloo.<\/p>\n

Other farmers came from as far away as Spain and Poland.<\/p>\n

French President Emmanuel Macron dug in against the Mercosur deal as he arrived for Thursday\u2019s EU summit, pushing for further concessions and more discussions in January. He said he has been in discussions with Italian, Polish, Belgian, Austrian and Irish colleagues among others about delaying it.<\/p>\n

\u201cFarmers already face an enormous amount of challenges,\u2033 he said, as farmer protests over the trade deal and a cattle disease roil regions around France. \u201cWe cannot sacrifice them to this accord.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Worried by a surging far right that rallies support by criticizing the deal, Macron\u2019s centrist government has demanded safeguards to monitor and stop large economic disruption in the EU, increased regulations in the Mercosur nations like pesticide restrictions, and more inspections of imports at EU ports.<\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s Meloni told the Italian Parliament on Wednesday that signing the agreement in the coming days \u201cwould be premature.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis doesn\u2019t mean that Italy intends to block or oppose (the deal), but that it intends to approve the agreement only when it includes adequate reciprocal guarantees for our agricultural sector,\u201d Meloni said.<\/p>\n

Von der Leyen is determined to sign the agreement, but she needs the backing of at least two-thirds of EU nations. Italy\u2019s opposition would give France enough votes to veto von der Leyen\u2019s signature.<\/p>\n

In Greece, farmers have set up roadblocks along highways across the country for weeks, protesting delays in agricultural subsidy payments as well as high production costs and low product prices that they say are strangling their sector and making it impossible to make ends meet.<\/p>\n

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Supporters say the EU-Mercosur deal would offer a clear alternative to Beijing\u2019s export-controls and Washington\u2019s tariff blitzkrieg, while detractors say it will undermine both environmental regulations and the EU\u2019s iconic agricultural sector.<\/p>\n

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said ahead of the Brussels summit that the EU\u2019s global status would be dented by a delay or scrapping of the deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the European Union wants to remain credible in global trade policy, then decisions must be made now,\u201d Merz said.<\/p>\n

The deal is also about strategic competition between Western nations and China over Latin America, said Agathe Demarais, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. \u201cA failure to sign the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement risks pushing Latin American economies closer to Beijing\u2019s orbit,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The political tensions that have marked Mercosur in recent years \u2014 especially between Argentina\u2019s far-right President Javier Milei and Brazil\u2019s center-left Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, the bloc\u2019s two main partners \u2014 have not deterred South American leaders from pursuing an alliance with Europe that will benefit their agricultural sectors.<\/p>\n

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Lula has been one of the most fervent promoters of the agreement. He was betting on closing the deal Saturday and scoring a major diplomatic achievement ahead of next year\u2019s general elections. He said he was surprised by Italy\u2019s hesitancy, and had spoken about it directly with Meloni.<\/p>\n

At a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, Lula was clearly irked by Italy and France\u2019s positions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t do it now, Brazil won\u2019t make any more agreements while I\u2019m president,\u201d Lula said, adding that the agreement would \u201cdefend multilateralism\u201d as Trump pursues unilateralism.<\/p>\n

Milei, a close ideological ally of Trump, also supports the deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must stop thinking of Mercosur as a shield that protects us from the world and start thinking of it as a spear that allows us to effectively penetrate global markets,\u201d he said some time ago.<\/p>\n

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Firstpost staff.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Harshvardhan.Singh
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The European Union is delaying a massive free-trade deal with South American countries after fiery protests by farmers and last-minute opposition by France and Italy threatened to derail the pact, seen by its backers as an important geopolitical move for both continents. Top EU officials had hoped to sign the EU-Mercosur deal in Brazil this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":883434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4510,108907],"tags":[8583,147301],"class_list":{"0":"post-883433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-delays","8":"category-free-trade","9":"tag-delays","10":"tag-free-trade"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}