Ireland to vote against EU-Mercosur deal

Farming organisations have welcomed confirmation that the Irish Government will vote no to the EU-Mercosur trade deal.

Speaking in Shanghai today, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that despite amendments made to Mercosur, they have to be confident that the standards in place for food production on Irish and European farmers "are not undermined by food production systems that are not as carbon efficient, and that don't have the same stringent standards", and he confirmed that the Government would be voting against the deal.

IFA President Francie Gorman also welcomed confirmation that Ireland would vote against the deal, saying it was "the right decision".

“There’s a clear commitment in the Programme for Government that our Government would oppose the deal. The so-called safeguards put forward by the EU Commission do not give any assurances that Brazilian beef will meet EU standards,” he said.

“In our discussions with members of Government over the last 48 hours, we re-stated that opposition to the Mercosur deal was the only credible position the Government could adopt. Farmers would have felt let down by any other approach.”

Francie Gorman said IFA’s campaign opposing Mercosur will continue after tomorrow’s meeting of the EU Ambassadors.

The announcement follows yesterday’s revelation that Brazilian beef containing banned hormones entered the Irish food chain in recent months and is now subject to an official recall by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland.

“This shows that the undertaking from Brazil about the processes they have in place are completely flawed and wholly ineffective,” he said.

Meanwhile the President of ICMSA, Denis Drennan, said that the Government’s decision that Ireland would vote against the Mercosur Agreement was the right decision on both economic and environmental grounds.

Mr Drennan said that there were certain occasions and circumstances in which basic principles of fairness and consistency had to override hype and arm-twisting and opposing Mercosur was precisely one of those occasions.

“The Government left it very late, but has come down on the right side of what is a head-to-head between fundamental principles of fairness and consistency and the kind of slippery expediency that seems to be the dominant approach in far too many situations now.

"ICMSA and Irish farmers in general have never been against fair trade; the point is that – as regards food and particularly beef – the agreement with the Mercosur was not and could not be fair. We have no way of ensuring that the beef that would be imported into the EU under the agreement would be of the same standards of traceability and environmentally sustainable production that the EU insists upon for its own farmers.

"And we know from long experience that the authorities in Mercosur countries are unable or unwilling to enforce even their existing standards and regulations. That leaves us with the EU forcing its own farmers to compete against cheaper substandard beef produced off an environmentally destructive system that is the direct opposite of the farming system that has been painstakingly introduced onto EU farms over the last 20 years. That was a hypocrisy too far and ICMSA welcomes the Irish Government’s belated recognition of that fact."

In the event of the deal being voted through by other member states tomorrow, Mr Drennan said the focus must switch to the EU Parliament and Ireland should work with MEPS from other member states who share our commitment to basic fairness and consistency to block the deal.