EU delays Mercosur trade deal until January amid farmer protests and opposition from France and Italy.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The European Union has delayed a massive free-trade deal with South American countries amid protests by EU farmers and as last-minute opposition by France and Italy threatened to derail the agreement.<\/p>\n European Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho confirmed on Thursday that the signing of the trade pact between the EU and South American bloc Mercosur will be postponed until January, further delaying a deal that had taken some 25 years to negotiate.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was expected to travel to Brazil on Saturday to sign the deal, but needed the backing of a broad majority of EU members to do so.<\/p>\n The Associated Press news agency reported that an agreement to delay was reached between von der Leyen, European Council President Antonio Costa and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni \u2013 who spoke at an EU summit on Thursday \u2013 on the condition that Italy would vote in favour of the agreement in January.<\/p>\n French President Emmanuel Macron had also pushed back against the deal as he arrived for Thursday\u2019s summit in Brussels, calling for further concessions and more discussions in January.<\/p>\n Macron said he has been in discussions with Italian, Polish, Belgian, Austrian and Irish colleagues, among others, about delaying the signing.<\/p>\n \u201cFarmers already face an enormous amount of challenges,\u2033 the French leader said.<\/p>\n The trade pact with Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay would be the EU\u2019s largest in terms of tariff cuts.<\/p>\n But critics of the deal, notably France and Italy, fear an influx of cheap commodities that could hurt European farmers, while Germany, Spain and Nordic countries say it will boost exports hit by United States tariffs and reduce reliance on China by securing access to key minerals.<\/p>\n The EU-Mercosur agreement would create the world\u2019s biggest free-trade area and help the 27-nation European bloc to export more vehicles, machinery, wines and spirits to Latin America at a time of global trade tensions.<\/p>\n Al Jazeera\u2019s Dominic Kane, reporting from Berlin, said Germany, Spain and the Nordic countries were \u201call lobbying hard in favour of this deal\u201d. But ranged against them were the French and Italian governments because of concerns in their powerful farming sectors.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir worry being that their products, such as poultry and beef, could be undercut by far cheaper imports from the Mercosur countries,\u201d Kane said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo no signing in December. The suggestion being maybe there will be a signing in mid-January,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n \u201cBut there must now be a question about what might happen between now and mid-January, given the powerful forces ranged against each other in this debate,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Mercosur nations were notified of the move, a European Commission spokeswoman said, and while initially reacting with a now-or-never ultimatum to its EU partners, Brazil opened the door on Thursday to delaying the deal\u2019s signature to allow time to win over the holdouts.<\/p>\n Brazil\u2019s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Italy\u2019s Meloni had asked him for \u201cpatience\u201d and had indicated that Italy would eventually be ready for the agreement.<\/p>\n The decision to delay also came hours after farmers in tractors blocked roads and set off fireworks in Brussels to protest the deal, prompting police to respond with tear gas and water cannon.<\/p>\n Protesting farmers \u2013 some travelling to the Belgian capital from as far away as Spain and Poland \u2013 brought potatoes and eggs to throw and waged a furious back-and-forth with police while demonstrators burned tyres and a faux wooden coffin bearing the word \u201cagriculture\u201d.<\/p>\n The European Parliament evacuated some staff due to damage caused by protesters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n EU delays Mercosur trade deal until January amid farmer protests and opposition from France and Italy. The European Union has delayed a massive free-trade deal with South American countries amid protests by EU farmers and as last-minute opposition by France and Italy threatened to derail the agreement. European Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho confirmed on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Brazil\u2019s President Lula says Italy\u2019s PM Meloni asked for \u2018patience\u2019<\/h2>\n
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