Tag: beef

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The looming Mercosur tragedy

Weak political leadership in Europe looks likely to doom the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement in a vote among EU Member States later this week. Denmark, as current Council President, has indicated it intends to schedule a vote at Ambassador level (COREPER II) to take place either Thursday or Friday this week. To be approved, the Agreement must gain the support of 55% of Member States (currently, 15 out of 27) representing at least 65% of the EU population. The Agreement can be blocked by a blocking minority which requires at least 4 countries representing at least 35% of the EU population. If a country abstains, its vote does not count either for the proponents or opponents.

As the thresholds are calculated against the total EU membership, and not just those who cast a yes/no vote, an abstaining country makes it more difficult both for proponents to gain a qualified majority and for opponents to form a blocking minority.… Read the rest

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The EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement will have a minimal effect on the EU beef market and should be ratified

The European Commission finally put forward the EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement concluded in December 2024 for ratification on 3 September 2025. The Commission adopted proposals for Council decisions on the signature and conclusion of two parallel legal instruments: the EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement (EMPA) and the interim Trade Agreement (iTA). The iTA will be repealed and replaced by the EMPA once the latter is fully ratified and enters into force. 

Livestock farmers continue to protest and to mobilise against ratification of the Agreement, arguing that it will open the EU market to a flood of South American imports and decimate the EU beef sector. But for beef and poultry, the tariff concessions are limited to relatively small increases in tariff rate quotas. These additional imports will result in lower prices for EU farmers compared to what otherwise they might expect, but recent empirical research suggests that the effect will be very muted.

In a recently-published paper with Alex Gohin, we estimate that if the EU had fully liberalised its beef tariffs with Mercosur countries in 2017 (the latest year for which all the relevant data for the analysis was available), beef farmers would have suffered a significant negative impact on their income of more than -5%.… Read the rest

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Greenhouse gas emission targets and Irish agriculture

Ireland faces a huge challenge in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Enda Kenny got into hot water last week for apparently saying one thing in his official speech to the Paris COP21 climate conference and another thing in unscripted remarks to journalists afterwards. Much of the subsequent controversy during the week revolved around the Irish government’s attitude to agricultural emissions and whether it was seeking special favours for the Irish agricultural sector in the current negotiations on setting national emissions targets for the period to 2030 in the framework of the EU’s 2030 Climate and Energy Package. I look at the background to this controversy in this post.

In his speech to the COP21 conference, Mr Kenny pointed out that Ireland’s national long-term vision is presented in climate legislation. This sets out its intention “to substantially cut CO2 emissions by 2050, while developing an approach towards carbon neutrality in the land sector that does not compromise our capacity for food production”.… Read the rest

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TTIP and the potential for US beef imports

Beef is generally considered to be a sensitive sector in the EU-US negotiations on a possible Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement. Currently, imports of beef from the US are limited by high tariffs and by the refusal of the EU to allow the import of beef produced with the aid of pharmaceutical technologies such as hormones and beta-agonists (a class of non-hormonal compounds that act to increase feed efficiency).

Nonetheless, EU imports of non-hormone-treated beef from the US have been increasing in recent years. Different views have been expressed about the likely consequences for the EU beef market if market access were further liberalised under a TTIP agreement. I examine the background to this issue in this post.

The WTO beef hormones dispute

Negotiations to increase US access to the EU market for beef as part of a TTIP agreement take place against the background of special trade concessions agreed following a complex series of disputes taken originally under the GATT and, subsequently, under the WTO’s dispute settlement process.… Read the rest

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OECD reports EU farm transfers at lowest level ever

The OECD produced the 2012 edition of its Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation report during the week. This is the publication that keeps tabs on the transfers to and from farmers and consumers as a result of government policy interventions. It also usually contains a chapter on a special theme, which this year is devoted to fostering innovation and productivity growth in agriculture.

General findings

The results are summarised in a series of indicators, of which the most well-known is the Producer Support Estimate (PSE) usually expressed in percentage terms. It measures the percentage of farm receipts in a country that is due to public policies.

Another useful indicator is the Nominal Protection Coefficient (NPC) which measures the ratio between the average price received by producers (at farm gate), including payments per tonne of current output, and the border price (measured at farm gate).

The report finds that in 2011 support to producers across the OECD area amounted to €182 billion as measured by the Producer Support Estimate (PSE).… Read the rest