{"id":3048,"date":"2026-02-07T11:25:34","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T11:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/3048\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T11:25:34","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T11:25:34","slug":"how-brussels-failed-to-stop-mercosur-trade-deal-fiasco-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/3048\/","title":{"rendered":"How Brussels failed to stop Mercosur trade deal\u00a0fiasco \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

MEPs ultimately backed a resolution to seek an opinion from the Court of Justice of the EU<\/a> on whether the texts of the agreement \u2014\u00a0with the Mercosur countries of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and which was in the works for over 25 years \u2014\u00a0comply with the EU treaties. The motion was carried by a margin of 334 to 324 with 11 abstentions. The Parliament now cannot give its assent to the deal until the court has ruled, which can take between 18 and 24 months.<\/p>\n

The suspension of the deal’s legislative approval sent shockwaves across Europe, especially as von der Leyen had hailed the agreement as a way to bolster EU trade amid turbulent relations with Washington.<\/p>\n

On a granular level, the freezing of the Mercosur deal can be traced to a handful of MEPs \u2014 notably from Romania\u2019s Socialists and Hungary\u2019s center right \u2014 whose last-minute U-turns tipped the balance. But it was national politics that really crashed the party, carving deep fault lines in the Parliament’s political groups that will leave deep scars.<\/p>\n

Mainstream political parties in the likes of Romania, Hungary, Spain, France and Poland are dealing with far-right and right-wing populist movements at home that have made Mercosur a central campaign issue, criticizing Brussels for a deal they claim harms European farmers, which in turn makes it difficult for their MEPs to openly support Mercosur in Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cNational everyday politics prevailed over the bigger picture, which the EU is trying to present since the start of this Commission,\u201d \u017deljana Zovko, vice-chair of the European People’s Party, told POLITICO. She said she was \u201ctotally upset\u201d with those EPP members who had voted to freeze the Mercosur deal out of the \u201cselfishness of national day-to-day politics and elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

A bitter taste<\/p>\n

The centrist coalition that in 2024 supported a second term for von der Leyen \u2014 the EPP, the Socialists and Democrats and the liberals of Renew \u2014 all backed Mercosur, but many of their members did not. Across political parties, certain national delegations have been against the deal for months, if not years, including the Irish, the French and the Poles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEPs ultimately backed a resolution to seek an opinion from the Court of Justice of the EU on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[104],"tags":[3284,211,3285,210,230,234,235,190,3039,3041,3286,3287,3288,3048,3289,1538,1888,3290,3291],"class_list":["post-3048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-argentina","tag-belgium","tag-brazil","tag-brussels","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-france","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-germany","tag-hungary","tag-ireland","tag-manfred-weber","tag-mercosur","tag-paraguay","tag-romania","tag-south-america","tag-trade-agreements","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","tag-uruguay","tag-zeljana-zovko"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}