Tag: tariff rate quotas

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Limited impact of Mercosur Partnership Agreement on the EU beef market

The EU reached a negotiated agreement on the final texts of what is now called the EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement on 6 December last (for details see this Commission web page). They include the texts agreed in June 2019, plus the political and cooperation components of the deal agreed in June 2020, as well as additional elements resulting from negotiations between March 2023 and December 2024.

The agreed texts have led to major upheavals within the EU. Several Member States, including France, Ireland, Austria and Poland, have come out to oppose ratification of the agreement over concerns about the deal’s potential impact on both European agriculture and the Amazon rainforest. Italy appears to be sitting on the fence and could go either way. These positions reflect opposition to the deal from farmer organisations as well as from environmental organisations in these countries and at EU level.

Much of this opposition has focused on the perceived negative impacts of the concessions the EU has made in the beef sector.… 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