Vote on the bilateral protection clause of the EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement and the current trade agreement on agricultural products

On 16 December 2025, the Presidency of the Council and the European Parliament reached a preliminary agreement on a regulation implementing the bilateral safeguard clause of the EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement and the EU-Mercosur Interim Trade Agreement on Agricultural Products. The regulation strengthens the protection of EU farmers and ensures that safeguard measures can be applied quickly and effectively if imports from Mercosur partner countries cause or threaten to cause serious injury.

The provisional agreement largely preserves the framework proposed by the Commission while introducing several targeted amendments, in particular to strengthen market monitoring and improve the response of safeguards for sensitive agricultural products. The regulation sets out how the EU can temporarily suspend tariff preferences for imports of agricultural products from Mercosur countries if these imports harm EU producers. It builds on existing EU protection instruments, but introduces faster procedures and simpler triggers to protect EU farmers. The co-legislators agreed to extend the list of sensitive agricultural products subject to stricter monitoring and faster protection procedures to include citrus fruits.

The co-legislators introduced several changes to the Commission’s proposal to ensure that the EU can respond quickly to market disruptions caused by increased imports of agricultural products from Mercosur. In the case of sensitive products, an 8% price reduction for individual products combined with an 8% increase in preferential import volumes in a three-year average or an 8% decrease in import prices will generally be considered sufficient grounds for the initiation of an investigation. The agreement also confirms the proposed fast-track time frame for investigations to be launched by the Commission once sufficient evidence is obtained. In the case of sensitive products, investigations are completed within four months, and in urgent cases, preliminary measures can be introduced within 21 days.

The Commission will continuously and proactively monitor imports of identified sensitive products and report to Parliament and the Council at least every six months on market developments and any risk of injury to EU producers. The co-legislators agreed to strengthen this framework by allowing monitoring to be extended to other products not included in the list of sensitive products, if duly requested by EU industry. In addition, by March 1, 2026, the Commission will issue technical guidelines to support market monitoring at national and local level. The agreed wording also introduces provisions that allow the Commission to act in the event that it discovers the circumvention of protective measures, by expanding the scope of the measures or by adopting other necessary implementing measures.