The EU Council and Parliament have reached provisional agreement on safeguards to protect EU farmers in the event of harmful import surges under the EU-Mercosur trade agreement.
The regulation, which implements the bilateral safeguard clause of the EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement and the EU-Mercosur interim Trade Agreement for agricultural products, strengthens protections for EU farmers and ensures that safeguard measures can be applied swiftly and effectively in case imports from Mercosur partners cause or threaten to cause serious injury.
The provisional agreement introduces a number of targeted additions, notably to strengthen market monitoring and improve the responsiveness of safeguard measures for sensitive agricultural products.
- The regulation sets out how the EU can temporarily suspend tariff preferences on agricultural imports from Mercosur if these imports harm EU producers.
- The list of sensitive agricultural products will be expanded subject to reinforced monitoring and faster safeguard procedures to include citrus fruits.
- Changes to the Commission’s proposal will ensure the EU could swiftly react to market disruptions caused by increased agricultural imports from Mercosur. For sensitive products, a price undercut of 8% by products coupled with either a 8% increase in preferential import volumes on a three-year average or a 8% drop in import prices, will as a rule be treated as sufficient grounds to launch an investigation.
The agreement also confirms the proposed swift timeframe of investigations to be launched by the Commission, once sufficient evidence is received. For sensitive products, investigations will conclude within four months and in urgent cases, provisional measures can be introduced within 21 days.
The Commission will constantly and proactively monitor imports of identified sensitive products and report at least every six months to the Parliament and the Council on market developments and any risk of injury to EU producers.
The co-legislators agreed to strengthen this framework by allowing the monitoring to be extended, if duly requested by EU industry to other products not covered by the list of sensitive products.
In addition, the Commission will issue technical guidelines by 1 March 2026 to support market monitoring at national and local level. The agreed text also introduces provisions allowing the Commission to act where it identifies circumvention of safeguard measures by extending the scope of measures or adopting other necessary implementing actions
Commission’s proposal for the EU-Mercosur bilateral safeguard regulation
