La Francia voterà contro l’accordo commerciale UE-Mercosur

So how are the majorities shaping up? It’s hard to keep track about this and if the deal is going to go through or not.

Now the states are trying to blackmail the others again in the final stages.

There is no stronger lobby in the EU than agrarian lobby.

I really need to get a tractor. Gets me everything I want.

They mocked us for 50 years because we spent on army instead of relying in the US. Look at where we are now….
And now they want to rely on other countries to feed themselves as if food isn t vital to survive…

good its a shit deal

America’s gone crazy, and Russia’s brought war to our doorstep. Yet here we are. Voting against a serious step forwards in EU / Latin American relations over beef.

Its not clear in which ways Macron has actually reformed anything, on every front he seems to have maintained the status quo or entrenched it even further, 8 years of ???

If Macron is a responsible man, he’d be voting against, but then he’d call Italy and tell them to vote in favour, so he can survive another day in France, but the trade deal gets signed finally.

We’re going to make a lot of money with other things, just give the agrarian industry some compensation for their supposed loses and move on.

the only lesson here is that Germany caving in to French demands with common debt for defense was immediately met with backstabbing.

We really need to learn from them and start vetoing things as well until this passes.

A black day for Putinists, the Russian fertiliser industry, the Russian war machine, and Putinist ally Lula. EU will become more self sufficient and not beholdened to dubious foreign leaders anymore.

I’d encourage people to have a chat with anyone doing agriculture. 

You buy land. The EU gives you a big fat cheque, rejoice, you pretend to do stuff, maybe sell a couple bananas and repeat the cycle. 

It’s quite interesting how large influence farming lobby groups seem to have in many countries. Also to public discourse.

Here in Reddit, I’ve seen multiple times especially Irish and French farming lobby articles directly linked. And that’s fine, but of course they are very biased sources.

But not in every country farming lobbies are so against this. For example in Finland, local MTK (a very powerful lobby with almost all farmers as members), has taken neutral stance, even positive one in some cases. They own a newspaper, Maaseudun Tulevaisuus, (literally translated “Future of Countryside”). It’s a quality paper, although they are of course very pro-farming.

Some articles from Maaseudun Tulevaisuus or MTK:

*”Controversial trade agreement receives surprising support from MTK – “I, for one, will not be leading a tractor march against Mercosur.”” -* [MTK’s chairman ](https://www.maaseuduntulevaisuus.fi/maatalous/3abb2032-8c7d-4948-a610-d47fc2af1f44)Juha Marttila

*”The benefits of trade agreements are exaggerated, but the protests by French and Italian farmers against Mercosur are still unreasonable – The collapse of this huge agreement would be the worst possible political option for the EU at the worst possible moment.”* – [Maaseudun Tulevaisuus article](https://www.maaseuduntulevaisuus.fi/uutiset/64b9c56e-e5bd-4c8d-b754-3501235038a0)

So in from Maaseudun Tulevaisuus, there are both supporting and negative articles about it. MTK was previously against the deal, but in the past 5 years they have been more neutral, sometimes even positive, and mostly lobbied about it in Finland and in EU in Copa-Cogeca. Finnish governments have been supporting the deal for over ten years.

In Italy, France and Ireland there are multiple lobby groups, and some are much more vocal and extreme than Finnish MTK. And especially in France the public opinion is also clearly against Mercosur deal, mostly due to the arguments that these lobby groups use.

Everybody is focusing on agricultural products, but what guarantee we have that half of European industry won’t just move their factories to Mercosur countries? After all that’s what happened in USA, NAFTA gutted their industry.

Yes, let’s vote against a trade deal that could boost our industrial export because French and Italian farmers, who only employ something like 2% of the workforce and pay pittance, want to be shielded from competition and be showered with subsidies.

The EU will die little by little because of all of these vetoes. But it will die amidst a barrage of applauses from all of our geopolitical rivals and our internal enemies like RN, Lega, AfD, etc.