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. If neither proponents nor opponents reach the required thresholds, then the proposal automatically falls. Therefore, in a tight contest, an abstaining country tends to tilt the outcome towards the ‘no’ side. Even if the blocking minority does not reach its required threshold, it can still prevent the proponents from reaching their QMV threshold, thus effectively scuppering the proposal.
By coincidence, the European Parliament will be voting separately tomorrow Tuesday 16 December on its position on the Commission proposal to strengthen the bilateral agricultural safeguards mechanism as a complementary measure to the Agreement. This measure was proposed by the Commission to provide additional reassurance to those countries that fear the Agreement will have catastrophic consequences for livestock farmers, and notably beef producers.
The Parliament’s vote tomorrow would lose any significance if Member States a couple of days later fail to vote in favour of the Agreement itself. In this case, the largely symbolic visit of President von der Leyen and Council President Costa to the Mercosur Summit on December 20th for a signing of the Agreement would fall through (largely symbolic, because even if the Council were to approve the Agreement, it still cannot come into force without the agreement of the European Parliament which would not hold a vote until 2026, and where the outcome also is not a foregone conclusion).
This blog has recognised that the concessions to Mercosur on sensitive agricultural products in the Agreement would imply some additional competition for EU livestock farmers (see this blog post in January 2025 and this post in October 2025). But it has argued that the impacts will be minimal and far from the catastrophic fears fanned by its opponents.
This is primarily because the trade concessions for sensitive agricultural products are confined to limited additional tariff rate quotas (TRQs). In the case of beef, because of the existence of over-quota imports that currently pay the full MFN tariff, the increase in imports that will result from implementing the Agreement will be even smaller than the nominal TRQs.
Because the Agreement will lead to a higher EU GDP, higher incomes for EU consumers will give a boost to domestic beef consumption, the size of which will depend on whether this is accompanied by additional employment or not. This will further help to offset the impact of some of the increase in Mercosur imports. More generally, any losses to livestock farmers must be weighed against the overall benefits of the agreement, both in economic and geopolitical terms.
The current state of play regarding voting intentions
What we know about the voting intentions of countries is that France, Poland, Italy and Ireland intend to vote against, Austria and Hungary will join them, while Belgium will abstain for technical reasons.
France has traditionally been opposed to a deal with Mercosur. At the Paris Agricultural Show in February 2025, President Macron emphasised that France continued to oppose the Agreement in the form that it was signed and was working to form a blocking minority in the Council. It was this stance that led the Commission to subsequently propose the legislation on bilateral agricultural safeguards. However, clearly this has not been sufficient to change opinion in France. President Macron personally appealed to Commission President von der Leyen to delay the process. The French Prime Minister backed this up yesterday urging a delay in the vote. The French position has not been helped by the emergence of extensive farmer protests in south-west France over the weekend over government policy on dealing with an outbreak of nodular dermatitis (lumpy skin disease).
Poland made its opposition clear back in June 2025 when the Polish Agriculture Minister on a visit to Paris stated that the Polish Government did not accept the Mercosur Agreement in its present form. In September 2025, after meeting President Macron, Prime Minister Tusk confirmed that Poland would join France in voting against the Agreement.
Italy has taken a more cautious route to opposition. Italian industry favours ratification and there is significant investment by Brazilian interests in the Italian meat industry which would benefit from the Agreement. But the Minister for Agriculture along with the Italian farm union Coldiretti opposed the Agreement. When the Commission safeguards proposal was announced in September 2025, the Italian Prime Minister’s office welcomed the move and announced that it would “assess the effectiveness of the additional guarantees provided … and consequently whether or not it can support the final approval of the EU-Mercosur Agreement”. However, Reuters reported today that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and French President Emmanuel Macron have agreed on the need to delay a final European Union vote on the Mercosur trade deal. Meloni’s desire not to antagonise U.S. President Trump who no doubt would be delighted to see the EU-Mercosur Agreement fail presumably has played a role in this decision.
Ireland is also officially against ratification of the Agreement. The governing coalition, in its Programme for Government following the last election, explicitly stated Ireland would “work with like-minded EU countries to stand up for Irish farmers and defend our interests in opposing the current Mercosur trade deal”. Ireland had been making ambiguous noises by saying that how it would vote would depend on whether a blocking minority was likely or not. The Irish Minister for European Affairs is quoted today as saying she was uncertain whether a vote would take place this week or not and claimed that Ireland was still assessing the situation. The clear movement of Italy into the no camp would make it impossible for Ireland to do anything other than vote against the Agreement.
In Austria, the parliament there has passed resolutions obliging the government to reject ratification of the Agreement and the government has consistently opposed the Mercosur deal. Hungary also opposes the Agreement on agricultural grounds.
Belgium’s abstention for technical reasons was confirmed by the federal Agriculture Minister in early December and stems from irreconcilable differences between the federal and regional ministries. Whereas Wallonia opposed the deal outright, the Flemish and federal coalition parties were divided. Because unanimity among Belgium’s governments is required to adopt a national position, the country defaulted to abstention.
Conclusions
When these dissenting voices are added up, a blocking minority seems to exist and a vote later in the week would reject ratification of the Mercosur Agreement. Various scenarios could emerge:
- The Danish Presidency may well have calculated that the arithmetic was stacked against ratification but decided to go ahead anyway to bring the painful process to a definitive conclusion. In principle, following a negative vote on a proposal, the proposal could be sent back to COREPER for further compromises or clarifications, or the Presidency could canvas for adjustments to build a sufficient majority for a future vote. Although the dissenting countries appear not to claim to oppose ratification, they call for it to be delayed to allow for further safeguards to be added. But what further safeguards might be offered by the Commission without re-opening the Agreement is not clear. And the Mercosur countries that have already made significant concessions in the Agreement to European interests are unlikely to want to do this.
- The Danish Presidency could decide to postpone the vote and leave it to the next Presidencies to try to sort out the issues. That would seem a fruitless exercise, not only for the reasons just stated, but also because subsequent Presidencies (Cyprus and then Ireland) are unlikely to want to prioritise the issue. Calling for a delay is therefore effectively to end the prospect of any Agreement.
The EU-Mercosur Agreement would create the world’s largest free trade area, with around 780 million inhabitants and accounting for around one-quarter of the world’s GDP. The Agreement would eliminate tariffs on around 91% of goods traded between the blocs. It would create a political partnership which would greatly benefit the EU at a time when it really does need to create alliances.
Stronger political leadership would have made the case for ratifying the Agreement for these reasons. Instead, it looks likely that Europe will throw away this opportunity and sink further into irrelevance in an increasingly geopolitical world.
This post was written by Alan Matthews.
Photo credit: Wikipedia, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license and slightly cropped.
