Europe Asia News

According to three EU diplomats cited by Politico, France is trying to buy time ahead of the decisive vote on the EU’s mega trade deal with the Latin American Mercosur bloc; one diplomat warned that this strategy could kill the long-awaited agreement.

The European Commission is rushing to finalize the trade agreement with Mercosur—bringing together Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay—before Christmas.

Now, just a week before the date when Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hopes to fly to Brazil for the signing ceremony, France is sounding the alarm that its long-standing demands have not been met. Diplomats say Paris has warned it cannot support the deal in the upcoming vote among member states and has proposed that the vote be held in January instead.

This could prevent Denmark’s Council presidency from reaching the supermajority required to approve the agreement. Under EU rules, this requires the support of a “qualified” majority—15 of the bloc’s 27 member states representing 65% of its population.

The French government reiterated on Thursday that it is not satisfied with the agreement and that its final decision will depend on progress in meeting its demands.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux told Politico: “France is a major agricultural power, and we are very firmly defending our agricultural interests in these negotiations... We continue to work on this agreement, but in its current form it is unacceptable.”

A senior EU diplomat warned that the long-awaited trade deal—worked on for a quarter of a century and set to create a common market for more than 700 million people—cannot afford another delay.

Speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, the diplomat said: “If (von der Leyen) does not sign, if we do not allow her to sign on the 20th, the deal is dead. And then we really need to think about where we want to be in the world.”