JUST IN: 🇪🇺🌎Catastrophe for EU's farmers and European food security after EU’s Mercosur free trade deal set to be signed with 4 South American countries.
Von der Leyen has won, along with her real constituents, lobbyists and massive chemical and agribusiness corporations.
The deciding factor was Italian PM Giorgia Meloni deciding to back the deal, in what will be viewed as a bitter betrayal by many conservatives.
The EU commission will bypass the democratically elected EU parliament entirely. The commission intends to “omit the European Parliament from the further procedure,” which grants European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen the authority to sign the deal directly.
While a significant coalition of nations opposed the move—specifically Poland, France, Ireland, Hungary, and Austria, with Belgium abstaining—they failed to reach the required “blocking minority.” Italian PM Meloni gave earlier signals she would not back the deal but ultimately aligned with von der Leyen despite mass protests by farmers.
The risks are enormous. Brazil alone allows the use of as many as 3,669 pesticides. Europe’s emphasis on “eating local” to reduce carbon emissions associated with transportation will become a joke, as food from halfway around the world will often be cheaper than locally produced goods. However, European chemical companies will reap massive profits.
Much of the food Europeans eat in the future will be flowing from the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, which features the most "agrotoxicity" in the world.
"This Brazilian state is the kingdom of the agricultural industry. Cotton, rice, sugarcane, corn, massive production of transgenic soybeans, and record pesticide use. Mato Grosso wins every global competition in the field of agrotoxicity. That’s the term used by those who condemn the chemical empire. Brazil allows the use of 3,669 pesticides. It’s a veritable Eldorado for corporations, primarily European ones. Products banned on the Old Continent are sold here,” argued the French-German documentary "Pesticides: Europe's Hypocrisy."
Polish MEP Anna Bryłka (
@annabrylka) has also outlined how the pesticide use in South America also represents not only a health risk, but also a competitive risk for Polish and European farmers.
Bryłka argues that "farmers from Mercosur countries produce food according to standards that are banned in the EU: other plant protection products, growth hormones, lack of real environmental standards." This forces European farmers to compete with cheaper production that is legally prohibited within their own borders. She further characterizes the import of food with unknown standards as a "risk to the health of millions of Europeans."
Another "big win" for backers of the EU, all with zero transparency and not even a vote from the only democratically-elected body, the European Parliament.