Speaking in Brussels on 5 January, a Commission spokesperson said: “We are on the right track to envisage a signing of the agreement and we do hope that will take place quite soon.”
The agreement with Mercosur — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — has been under negotiation for roughly 25 years and is presented by supporters as a major tariff-cutting deal for EU exporters. It remains politically divisive inside the EU, particularly over agriculture, environmental conditions and food safety standards.
Brussels has been pursuing a legal structure designed to allow the trade component to move ahead under EU competence. On 3 September 2025 the Commission adopted proposals for Council decisions on an EU–Mercosur Partnership Agreement and a separate interim Trade Agreement covering only trade matters. Under the Commission’s published approach, the interim Trade Agreement would enter into force once it is signed and concluded by the Council by qualified majority, after the European Parliament gives its consent, while the wider Partnership Agreement would require ratification by all member states.
The Commission’s optimistic tone comes as governments respond to fresh farmer action linked to the Mercosur file. In France, the government announced on 4 January that it would tighten checks on a range of imported food products, saying the aim was to ensure imports comply with EU rules on substances banned for producers inside the bloc. Agriculture minister Annie Genevard said a decree would be issued “soon” to suspend imports of certain products already known to contain banned substances, while prime minister Sébastien Lecornu said any imported product showing traces of mancozeb, glufosinate, thiophanate-methyl or carbendazim would not be allowed into France.
French officials framed the move as both a response to farmer concerns about competition and a signal to Brussels. Genevard called on the Commission to apply similar checks across the EU, and reiterated that France would press for “our rules” to be respected for goods sold on the French market. The French government has also linked farmer discontent to other issues, including measures tied to livestock disease controls.
France has been among the most prominent opponents of signing the deal in its current form, alongside Poland, while Italy has been a pivotal player in recent Council arithmetic. In December France and Italy sought to delay a final EU vote on the agreement, with France working to assemble a blocking minority. Protests around the mid-December European Council meeting in Brussels included an anti-deal demonstration of about 7,000 people that turned violent, with Belgian police using tear gas and water cannon after some protesters threw objects and smashed windows.
On 5 January, separate reporting indicated that Italy’s stance may be shifting. Bloomberg reported that Italy was expected to back the deal when EU ambassadors return to the file on 9 January, a move that would reduce the likelihood of a blocking minority and make it easier for the Commission to proceed to signature.
Alongside the political management, EU institutions have been building additional safeguards aimed at addressing agricultural concerns. On 16 December 2025, the European Parliament backed a safeguard clause to allow temporary suspension of tariff preferences for sensitive farm imports, and argued for lower thresholds to trigger investigations, faster procedures, and a reciprocity mechanism where there is credible evidence that imports benefiting from preferences do not meet equivalent environmental, animal welfare, health, food safety or labour requirements applied to EU producers.
A day later, the Council said negotiators from the Council and Parliament had reached a provisional agreement on rules to safeguard the EU agri-food sector. The Council described faster procedures and “simpler triggers”, including reinforced monitoring for sensitive products and the addition of citrus fruits to the list. It said that, for sensitive products, an investigation would as a rule be triggered when price undercutting of 8 per cent is coupled with either an 8 per cent rise in preferential import volumes (measured against a three-year average) or an 8 per cent drop in import prices, and noted that urgent provisional measures could be introduced within 21 days.
The Commission continues to argue that market access for sensitive agricultural products would be capped through quotas and that EU sanitary and phytosanitary rules would continue to apply to goods sold in the EU. Its published factsheet states that the agreement would permit 99,000 tonnes of Mercosur beef to enter the EU market at a 7.5 per cent duty, and sets out quota-based access for poultry and sugar, alongside a bilateral safeguard clause.
The immediate test will be whether member states align behind a timetable for signature and subsequent ratification steps. On Monday, the Commission did not give a date for signing, but maintained that the process was moving in that direction “quite soon”, against a background of intensifying farm mobilisation and national political pressure in key capitals.
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