The European Parliament voted to submit a landmark trade deal with South American countries for judicial review by the bloc’s top judges, risking further delays to the Mercosur pact, which has already been a quarter century in the making.
EU lawmakers made the decision on Wednesday, which will send the agreement with Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay to the EU’s Court of Justice for a legal assessment before Parliament ratifies it.
Some EU lawmakers have argued that not every element of the pact is legal, but others insisted the judicial referral was merely a stalling tactic pushed by the deal’s opponents.
EU countries recently approved the Mercosur pact after more than 25 years of negotiations, pushing it through over strong objections from France, which argued that the free-trade agreement would undermine European agriculture.
Still, the achievement was a major geopolitical win for the EU, strengthening its foothold in a resource-rich region increasingly contested by the US and China.
The court review could take at least six months, and any findings that elements are not legal would require more negotiations to settle the points of contention.
Farmers in Luxembourg, France and Belgium angry over EU-Mercosur deal
Those pushing for the review questioned whether the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm responsible for trade matters, had the authority to conclude every part of the deal.
They say the commission split the EU-Mercosur agreement into parts to avoid full national ratification, and raised concerns about whether provisions allowing Mercosur countries to retaliate if new EU laws harm their exports may infringe on the bloc’s regulatory autonomy.
In the interim, the commission could provisionally implement the deal without parliament’s blessing, as it has with past trade agreements. Such a move would increase tensions with EU lawmakers, however.
The commission declined to say whether it had decided to take that step.
“The commission regrets this decision made by the European Parliament,” Olof Gill, a commission spokesperson, said on Wednesday at a press briefing, arguing that the commission had already addressed parliament’s legal questions. “These aren’t new questions, they were already addressed in the context of past trade agreements in particular with regard to Chile, for example.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, one of the deal’s most vocal proponents, urged the commission not to wait on implementing the agreement.
“The European Parliament’s decision on the Mercosur agreement is regrettable,” he wrote on social media. “It fails to recognise the geopolitical situation. We are convinced of the legality of the agreement. No more delays.”
Luxembourg industry lobby group Fedil also described the European Parliament’s vote as regrettable, adding that the move “is likely to cause unnecessary delays in the implementation of an agreement that is crucial for the European Union’s position on the international stage.”
“This decision comes in a geopolitical context marked by increasing tensions and at a time when the need to diversify Europe’s export and import markets has never been more evident,” Fedil said in a statement released late on Wednesday afternoon.
(With additional reporting from Samuel Stolton, Michael Nienaber and John Monaghan)
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