The pact will begin to be applied provisionally, without waiting for ratification by the European Parliament, after having already been validated by Argentina and Uruguay.
The decision comes despite frontal opposition from France and Poland, as well as from the European agricultural sector, which fears unfair competition from Latin American products.
Von der Leyen has also not taken into account the reservations of the European Parliamentwho sent the text to Court of Justice of the European Union to examine its legality.
While President Pedro Sánchez supports the provisional application of the pact with Mercosur, Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s PP has asked to wait for the CJEU to rule.
Along with Sánchez, the other European leader who has called for accelerating Mercosur is the chancellor Friedrich Merzwhich considers this agreement as a central pillar of the European Union’s trade diversification agenda, along with the recently signed pact with India.
Both Sánchez and Merz defend that the agreement with Mercosur constitutes a strategic priority, considering that it will allow the EU to open new markets to compensate for the increase in tariffs decreed by Trump and, at the same time, reduce dependence on China in key products such as rare earths.
On the opposite side, the French president, Emmanuel Macronand farmers’ organizations across Europe have led the rejection of the pact, arguing that liberalization will harm the community farming sector.
The agreement with the Latin American bloc – which is based in the exchange of beef and Latin American agricultural products by cars and machinery from the European Union – will form a market of 700 million inhabitants and will save European exporters 4,000 million euros a year in tariffs, according to Brussels.
Specifically, Mercosur’s “prohibitive tariffs” on key industrial products such as automobiles (currently 35%), machinery (14-20%) and pharmaceuticals (up to 14%) are cut.
It is estimated that the agreement can increase annual EU exports to Mercosur by up to 39% (49 billion euros), supporting more than 440,000 jobs in Europe.
Although the pact has provoked strong rejection in the primary sector (with protests in numerous EU capitals), Brussels maintains that it will allow increase European agri-food exports to Mercosur by 50%thanks to the reduction of tariffs on key products such as wines and spirits (up to 35%), chocolate (20%) and olive oil (10%).
In addition, the pact protects 344 Community geographical indications against any imitation. For the most sensitive products (beef, chicken, rice and sugar), the EU has approved a monitoring and early warning mechanism to detect any sharp increase in imports, which would allow tariffs to be reintroduced.