ICMSA say Commission preparing ‘Compo-Bribe’ to overcome French resistance to Mercosur Agreement

The President of ICMSA has said that the reports that the EU is preparing to ‘compensate’ French farmers in return for the French Government dropping its opposition to the Mercosur Agreement is profoundly worrying and actually represents an admission on the part of the Commission and its negotiators that the Agreement would specifically undermine the EU’s indigenous farming sector.  Speaking in response to reports on the highly regarded Politico website that the compensation package had already been raised with French officials, ICMSA President Denis Drennan said that the so-called ‘compensation package’ actually served as a bribe – and was intended to serve in that respect.

“It’s beyond disappointing that we have Commission officials dressing up what is plainly a bribe to the farmers of a certain Member State as a so-called ‘compensation package’. It’s nothing of the sort and everyone has to remember that long after the ‘sugar rush’ of this compensation package has been spent, what’s left of the EU’s indigenous farming community will be buried under cheap and environmentally destructive imports coming from these Mercosur South American States. This is a classic tactical ruse on the part of the EU Commission: take their own EU farmers to the brink of ruin with over-regulation and low margins, then offer them a temporary ‘fill-up’ through a one-off compensation package, pressurise them to take that financial aid while simultaneously negotiating with an external trading bloc to actually undermine your own farmers who are cowed into silence by having accepted the compo-bribe. The Commission is then able to hand access to the Mercosur markets to the EU Tech, Pharma and Financial sectors and get cheap food produced to lower standards for its consumers. It’s ‘win-win’ for them and ‘lose-lose’ for the EU farmers and anyone who wants to see the rainforests protected from the kind of insane clearances that South American farming is predicated on”, said Mr. Drennan.   

Mr. Drennan said that the single biggest disappointment in the debate around Mercosur was not the craven attitude of the Commission – farmers, he said, expected no more from that institution. What was more disappointing was the ‘deafening silence’ from our environmental lobby who seemed more fixated by whether an acre in Tipperary could support one or one-and-a-half cows then they were by the looming threat to the last hope for global carbon capture.

“Where are all the media commentators and ‘activists’ who are never off our airwaves objecting to a new slurry tank at the other end of the country? If Mercosur goes through – or is bribed through as these reports seem to indicate – then South American beef production will rise to meet that EU demand and that production will be at the expense of their forests and global climate stability, we know this because that is precisely the way that existing South American beef production has developed. The Irish Government must indicate that – even if the French ‘cover’ is withdrawn – that Ireland will absolutely not reduce its opposition to an agreement that is without any environmental merit at all and will signal the end of indigenous EU beef production probably forever”, he concluded.

Ends        16 October 2024

Denis Drennan, 086-8389401

President, ICMSA.

Or

Cathal MacCarthy, 087-6168758

ICMSA Press Office