The EU on Wednesday moved a step closer to sealing the world’s largest free-trade zone, giving final approval to its long-delayed pact with South America’s Mercosur bloc while assuring ‘robust’ protections for farmers to win over a skeptical France. The pact, set to create the world’s largest 700-million-strong trade area, is key to Brussels’ push to diversify markets.
I’m cautiously hopeful about this. I think a lot of the agricultural concerns in both directions are quite valid (i.e. impact on Europe’s ability to domestically feed itself, and impact on the amazon and other South American forests), but there’d also be a lot of major benefits on both sides, so I hope we can find a way to make it happen while lessening the negative impacts.
France is already in such a tumultuous political situation right now, I wonder if this’ll fly under the radar there, or be more fuel on the fire.