The MERCOSUR-EU trade agreement and its impact on peasant women: Notes from Brazil
In the Column Aromas of this March, women reflect historical asymmetries, alleviate the rights of women and increase the socio-environmental impacts of the MERCOSUR-European Union trade agreement
The negotiations for a free trade agreement between the MERCOSUR blockade (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) and the European Union (EU, currently with 27 countries) started as far as back as the early 1990s. Even then, the agreement’s neoliberal “DNA” (common to many of Brazil’s economic policies) was evident to all.
The negotiations of this agreement were carried out in secret and with the exclusion of popular participation for more than 20 years that its elaboration took. In this long period of time, many years were stalled in negotiations, and the terms of the agreement presented in 2019 were essentially defined during the governments of Jair Bolsonaro, in Brazil, and Mauricio Macri, in Argentina.
From this text, the diplomatic team of Lula’s government proposed to review some aspects, but the essence of the neocolonial structure of the agreement was not changed. In this sense, it is urgent to understand the magnitude of predicted social violations and also analyze the differentiated impacts on subjects, specifically, the threat to the rights of women, especially women of the countryside, waters and forests.
The commercial pillar of the agreement reiterates historical asymmetries, which establishes unfavorable external constraints on South American cities, privileging the ancient exchange of mineral and agricultural goods, produced by MERCOSUR, for industrialized goods from Europe, such as vehicles, machinery and pesticides.
This scenario, created by free trade treaties, imposes a series of vulnerabilities and setbacks to important achievements achieved by women, who in times of labor crisis are the first to be fired from companies.
The liberalization of tariffs (import duties) turns out to be a geopolitical instrument of Europe, which seeks other markets in the face of the predominance of Chinese and American economies. This is translated, in Latin American territories, into a demand for the expansion of the agroindustrial and mining frontier over biomes and territories occupied by water villages, the countryside and the forests.
Furthermore, the impacts of this colonialist relationship were analyzed by researchers from the University of Boston (2021).
To quote, “As other free-trade agreements, the EU-MERCOSUR agreement may lead to some job creation, but it may also lock many countries in a condition of technological and industrial subordination, with adverse consequences in terms of inequality, growth and development. Considering the participating countries’ economic structures and their evolution, the agreement may well lead to the expansion of low-productivity, low-wage sectors at the expense of more dynamic sectors, reinforcing the drivers of inequality and economic stagnation.”
The results of the study point to the depth of deindustrialization and unemployment in MERCOSUR countries, a situation that worsens inequality and social, political and food insecurity. Therefore, the specialization in the export of raw materials places the countries of the South Atlantic in a condition of vulnerability and technological dependence.
This scenario, created by free trade treaties, imposes a series of vulnerabilities and setbacks to important achievements achieved by women, who in times of labor crisis are the first to be fired from companies. In the countryside, the voracity of extractivism and agribusiness and its consequent potential for natural degradation favor contamination and illnesses in communities, overwhelming women with the demands of reproductive work. Furthermore, the forced displacement of recent populations to give way to megaprojects ignores women as political subjects in the compensation negotiation process.
In the current context, the MERCOSUR-European Union agreement is in the legal revision phase of the text, before being translated. The agreement has not yet been signed! To be signed, it needs to be voted on by the European Parliament and authorized by the EU Council (requiring the support of 15 countries representing 65% of the Community population). With these steps completed, authorization to sign the agreement was obtained.
But not without resistance!
The vector of resistance resides in women. By organizing community meetings, through training and by occupying streets peasant women have played an important role in the fights that led to the suspension of the imperialist project such as the ALCA – Free Trade Area of the Americas – in 2005, in Mar del Plata. That fight against the capital and other imperialist projects continues to this day.
Women continue to march, denouncing violence and environmental crimes, fighting against the plundering of common goods, and against the signing and ratification of agreements that, like this one, continue to fill the galleys of the Global North with our wealth at the expense of the massacre of peoples. Women continue to fight constantly, once again claiming the banner of popular sovereignty!
Adapted from an article by Raiara Pires, Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining (MAM) that appeared on the MST website on 10th February 2025. All images taken from MST’s website.