Small and medium-scale farmers are firmly rejecting the European Commission’s proposal for the EU-Mercosur and EU-Mexico free trade agreements (FTAs). This week in Brussels, farmers from across several countries, together with a broad coalition of around 40 trade unions and civil society organisations, united in action to deliver a clear and urgent message: these treaties must not, and will not pass.

While the European Commission claims to protect farmers through so-called safeguard mechanisms in the EU-Mercosur FTA, it implicitly acknowledges the harm the treaty will cause, yet fails to prevent the unfair competition it will unleash.

The Commission has decided to split the agreement in order to bypass democratic national opposition, ensuring that only a qualified majority in the European Council would be enough to bring the trade component fully into force.

Furthermore, it presents the deal as if it were already validated even though it can be still rejected by both the European Council and the European Parliament. ECVC calls on the governments of EU Member States and MEPs to take a firm stand against these agreements.

In front of the European Parliament, ECVC members expressed their anger.

“The European Commission persists in abandoning our farms to unfair competition. Coupled with plans to reduce the CAP budget, this strategy is unsustainable on the ground and prevents meeting the crucial challenges facing the sector!”, said Philippe Duvivier, Belgian farmer and President of the Wallonian farmers union FUGEA.

“Those profiting from this agreement are trade and chemical companies, not farmers. How can farmers protect the climate, preserve nature, and treat the earth fairly under these conditions?” asked Bernd Schmitz, a German dairy farmer and Deputy Federal Management of the German farmers organisation AbL.

“The EU-Mercosur treaty will continue to drive livestock farmers out of our territories. These policies of market liberalisation and deregulation are creating fear among the population. They are paving the way for the far right!” , warned Stéphane Galais, a French livestock farmer and national secretary of La Confédération Paysanne.

The additional safeguard measures fail to address the damage that the EU-Mercosur agreement will have on farmers. As highlighted in an analysis that ECVC published recently , a recurring problem with these mechanisms is that the EU lacks the capacity to anticipate crises and intervenes only after they have occurred.

“This was evident in the context of the temporary, and understandable, suspension of import duties and quotas on Ukrainian agricultural exports. Despite the fact that it was both obvious and predictable that such lower-priced cereal imports would affect EU market prices, the European Commission and Member States were completely unable to anticipate the consequences and only took action once the crisis had erupted and farmers were already protesting in the streets.” ECVC notes in its press release.

Furthermore, imported agricultural products arrive at specific times and places. These goods are not distributed evenly across the market and can trigger sudden price or quantity shocks during certain periods. These safeguard measures, which rely on macro-economic indicators to monitor the market, fail to address these localised crises. As a result, the cumulative impact of these disruptions will go largely unnoticed, except for the farmers who are forced to abandon their job.

“In addition, we are well aware of the arbitrariness with which the European Commission and Member States apply clause mechanisms within Free Trade Agreements. For example, despite Article 2 of the EU‑Israel trade agreement explicitly stating the importance of respecting human rights among the parties, this provision has not been used to suspend the treaty, even in the face of well-documented, systemic violations by the Israeli state against the Palestinian population.” the press note added.

Meanwhile, the European Commission promotes the EU-Mercosur agreement by announcing, in their own economic analysis, an expected GDP increase of just 0.05% by 2040. This ridiculously small and distant macro-economic gain cannot justify policies that represent such a direct attack on farmers. It is time to put an end to this. Instead of blindly adhering to neoliberal trade dogma, which has consistently failed to deliver the promised prosperity and has fuelled enormous inequality, the EU should push for a sustainable global trading system based on food sovereignty and cooperation to build stronger alliances with the Global South .