The Council presidency and the European Parliament today reached a provisional agreement on a regulation implementing the bilateral safeguard clause of the EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement and the EU-Mercosur interim Trade Agreement for agricultural products.
The regulation strengthens protections for EU farmers and ensures that safeguard measures can be applied swiftly and effectively in case imports from Mercosur partners cause or threaten to cause serious injury.
This agreement is without prejudice to the ongoing discussions within the Council on the signature and conclusion of the EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement and interim Trade Agreement.
The preliminary agreement reached tonight with the European Parliament on an EU safeguard regulation will ensure swift action to protect EU farmers in the event of harmful import surges. With this and other measures, great efforts have been made to address concerns and pave the way for approving the crucial EU-Mercosur agreement. It is vital that the EU diversifies our trade and strategic partnerships in times like these.
Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Denmark’s minister for foreign affairs
Main elements of the agreement
The provisional agreement largely preserves the Commission’s proposed framework, while introducing a number of targeted additions, notably to strengthen market monitoring and improve the responsiveness of safeguard measures for sensitive agricultural products.
Scope of the safeguard measures
The regulation sets out how the EU can temporarily suspend tariff preferences on agricultural imports from Mercosur if these imports harm EU producers. It builds on existing EU safeguard tools but introduces faster procedures and simpler triggers to protect EU farmers.
The co-legislators agreed to expand the list of sensitive agricultural products subject to reinforced monitoring and faster safeguard procedures to include citrus fruits.
Investigations and monitoring
The co-legislators introduced some changes to the Commission’s proposal to ensure the EU could swiftly react to market disruptions caused by increased agricultural imports from Mercosur. For sensitive products, a price undercut of 8% by products coupled with either a 8% increase in preferential import volumes on a three-year average or a 8% drop in import prices, will as a rule be treated as sufficient grounds to launch an investigation.
The agreement also confirms the proposed swift timeframe of investigations to be launched by the Commission, once sufficient evidence is received. For sensitive products, investigations will conclude within four months and in urgent cases, provisional measures can be introduced within 21 days.
The Commission will constantly and proactively monitor imports of identified sensitive products and report at least every six months to the Parliament and the Council on market developments and any risk of injury to EU producers. The co-legislators agreed to strengthen this framework by allowing the monitoring to be extended, if duly requested by EU industry to other products not covered by the list of sensitive products. In addition, the Commission will issue technical guidelines by 1 March 2026 to support market monitoring at national and local level. The agreed text also introduces provisions allowing the Commission to act where it identifies circumvention of safeguard measures by extending the scope of measures or adopting other necessary implementing actions
Next steps
The text of the provisional agreement will now have to be endorsed and adopted by both institutions before being published in the official journal. The regulation will apply to the interim Trade Agreement from its entry into force and will continue to apply once the EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement enters into force.
Background
The bilateral safeguard clauses form part of both the EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement and the EU-Mercosur interim Trade Agreement.
The safeguard regulation complements the broader agreements, which aim to deepen trade and political relations between the EU and Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) while ensuring robust protection for EU agricultural sectors that may be particularly exposed to import competition.
O artigo foi publicado originalmente em Conselho Europeu.
