Spain asks to evaluate the impact of Mercosur

The Spanish Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Acting, Luis Planas, explained that he will ask the European Commission to “evaluate the impacts on the whole of the commercial sectors affected in the recent agreement between the European Union (EU) and Mercosur .

“Should they prove negative,” the measures should be arbitrated via the safeguard clause, said Planas, as he arrived at the meeting of EU agricultural ministers that was held in Brussels on Monday. Mercosur is positive from the agrifood point of view “, complained Planas, who believes that” from the commercial point of view “the agricultural sector is in” an unbalanced situation “. He pointed out that this is something that could be counteracted by the so-called safeguard clause, a provision that allows an exception to the community norm due to a serious economic crisis.

For this, Planas puts the focus on sectors such as “olive oil and wines”, which can help Spain to balance the situation a bit, given the farmers’ protests over the agreement with Mercosur.

Storage of oil

Precisely the situation of the olive oil market in Spain have been other issues that Planas has taken to Brussels. And he was “optimistic” about the attitude of the European Commission on the “legal possibility that there is support for agri-food cooperatives that want to make private storage of oil,” in what he believes is a “fundamental” issue.

Planas said that “the sector needs to be better structured“, in addition to “regulating it and expanding the markets” in order to maintain prices.

The minister explained that last week in Brussels maintained “high-level contacts in the face of self-regulation”, although he anticipates that they will “take time to analyze the proposal” since it is the responsibility of both the General Directorate of Agriculture and the Ministry of Agriculture. Competition.

With this solution, Planas explained, it will be possible to avoid the “slide of ups and downs that occurs between campaigns like this, with 1.78 million tons, which are record campaigns, and those with lower production.”

Private storage is a mechanism activated for the last time in 2012, which implies the granting of European aid to temporarily remove product from the market to recover prices, with the aim that by reducing supply, the amounts improve.