Following their meetings in Budapest and Vienna, the French Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, Ms. Annie Genevard, the Hungarian Minister of Agriculture, Mr. István Nagy, the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Mr. Péter Szijjarto, and the Austrian Federal Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, Climate Protection and the Environment, Regions and Water Management, Mr. Norbert Totschnig, reiterated their strong concerns regarding the proposed free trade agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur countries, as concluded in Montevideo on December 6, 2024.
“Significant quantities of imported products produced under lower standards could lead to the exclusion of European agricultural products, significantly reducing purchase prices and thus the profitability of agricultural production. This would also jeopardise production, development and investment, thus endangering European food security and sovereignty”, stressed Minister István Nagy.
Indeed, this agreement, in its current version, is unbalanced to the detriment of European agricultural interests, insofar as it does not contain a specific safeguard clause for sensitive European agricultural products.
The entry into force of the agreement between the European Union and Mercosur, in its current version, would be detrimental to our agricultural production, an essential factor of European sovereignty, but also “the soul of our rural territories” as Minister Peter Szijjarto recalled.
Minister Totschnig emphasized the importance of agriculture for food sovereignty and economic growth in the European Union. These two aspects can only be guaranteed by competitive agricultural production from our regions, he added.
The current geopolitical uncertainty does not in any way call these findings into question, “an agreement that was bad remains so”, recalled Minister Annie Genevard.
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