EU-Mercosur deal: European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) to mobilize in November
After widespread farmers protests at the beginning of the year and countless agricultural crises (prices, animal diseases, climate disasters, etc.), ECVC farmers and civil society organisations from across Europe will mobilise in Brussels in the week commencing 11 November against the European Commission’s desperate attempts to approve the EU-Mercosur agreement.
If signed, the agreement will see small and medium-sized farmers and peasant family farming be replaced by large agricultural and livestock industrial production. The agreement will create unfair competition, dumping and a collapse of prices for European farmers, while also driving enormous social and environmental problems in the four Mercosur countries, in total contradiction to the objectives of the Green Deal and the promises made in the Strategic Dialogue on Agriculture.
“The EU wants to set up a fund to compensate European farmers for the damage caused by the EU-Mercosur agreement, however this damage should never be allowed to happen in the first place! And the most simple way to do that is not signing the agreement. The vast majority of European farmers are opposed to competition between farmers throughout the world, as it destroys more social, sustainable agriculture, is harmful to farmers’ incomes, the environment and, more broadly, the rural populations of the signatory countries. We are preparing to mobilise to prevent this disastrous agreement from being approved.”
As Andoni Garcia Arriola from the ECVC Coordinating Committee
Instead of pushing for this incompatible free-trade narrative, ECVC is demanding that EU institutions ensure fair prices and conditions for farmers and agricultural workers by:
- Putting an end to free trade agreements and unfair competition, with a definite halt to negotiations on EU-Mercosur agreement.
- Adding purchasing agricultural produce below production prices to the blacklist of the Unfair Trading Practices Directive via fast-track procedure. Prices to farmers must cover the costs of production.
- Regulating markets via the Common Market Organisation (CMO) in CAP to ensure minimum prices, minimum entry prices for imports, and volume regulation.
- Ensuring a sufficient budget and a fair distribution of CAP aid to enable a viable transition to agroecology and sustainable practices.
Ultimately, farmers need fair prices and the conditions to grow food to feed the population, not new compensation payments. Through this approach, the European Commission is proving to farmers that they have no intention to honour the promises made this year to address farmer concerns; instead they will continue to treat farmers as inconsequential or idiotic, pushing a neoliberal agenda without any regard for the number of farmers who pay the price with their livelihoods or their lives.
Farmers will mobilise in the week commencing 11 November to protect their livelihoods and the future of agriculture in Europe. ECVC will also have a delegation in Rio de Janeiro during the G20 Summit 2024 to coordinate protests with peasant organisations in Brazil, Argentia, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Details to be shared via eurovia.org and @ECVC1 (X and Facebook) or @ecvc_viacampesina (Instagram).