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The Court of Justice of the EU will determine if the accord with South America is compatible with the bloc\u2019s policy.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The \u200dEuropean Parliament has voted to refer the \u2060European Union\u2019s \u200bcontentious free trade agreement \u200dwith four South American countries to the bloc\u2019s \u200dtop \u2060court, casting a veil of uncertainty over the future of the accord as it ended a 25-year wait.<\/p>\n In a close ballot on Wednesday, lawmakers in the French city of Strasbourg voted 334 to 324 in favour of asking the Court of Justice of the European Union to determine whether the deal backed by most EU nations and the European Commission is compatible with the bloc\u2019s policy.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The EU signed its largest-ever trade pact on Saturday, after 25 years of negotiations.<\/p>\n It eliminates tariffs on more than 90 percent of bilateral trade, and favours the European exports of cars, wine and cheese, while making it easier for South American beef, poultry, sugar, rice, honey and soya beans to enter Europe.<\/p>\n Supporters, including Germany and Spain, argued the deal was essential to offset business lost to United States tariffs and to reduce reliance on China by \u200dsecuring access to critical minerals.<\/p>\n Its signature was hailed as a significant geopolitical victory for the EU in an age of US tariffs and surging Chinese exports, expanding the bloc\u2019s foothold in a resource-rich region increasingly contested by Washington and Beijing.<\/p>\n Opposers, including France, Poland and farmer groups, said the agreement would sharply increase imports of cheap beef, sugar and poultry, undercutting domestic farmers who have staged repeated protests.<\/p>\n The EU executive said it \u201cregrets\u201d the European Parliament\u2019s decision to bloc the deal with the South American trade bloc, known as Mercosur (Mercado Comun del Sur, or Southern Common Market) and comprised of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.<\/p>\n \u201cAccording to our analysis, the questions raised in the motion by the parliament are not justified because the commission has already addressed those questions and issues in a very detailed way,\u201d European Commission trade spokesman Olof Gill told reporters in Brussels.<\/p>\n The EU Court of Justice must now rule on whether its \u200cprovisions restrict the EU\u2019s ability to set environmental and consumer health policies. The court typically takes around two years to deliver such opinions, and the ruling could then force the deal to be amended.<\/p>\n The EU \u200ccould still apply the pact provisionally pending the ruling and parliamentary approval, and the European \u2060Parliament would retain the power to annul it later.<\/p>\n But doing so could prove politically \u200cdifficult given the likely backlash. Thousands of farmers driving tractors and waving flags staged a protest at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday, ahead of the vote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Court of Justice of the EU will determine if the accord with South America is compatible with the bloc\u2019s policy. The \u200dEuropean Parliament has voted to refer the \u2060European Union\u2019s \u200bcontentious free trade agreement \u200dwith four South American countries to the bloc\u2019s \u200dtop \u2060court, casting a veil of uncertainty over the future of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9407","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\/9407","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=9407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Offsetting US tariffs<\/h2>\n
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