Tusk, Macron to discuss ways to mitigate EU-Mercosur impact
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced plans to talk about protective measures for the European Union-Mercosur trade deal during his upcoming meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Tusk will be visiting Paris on Thursday for the meeting of the coalition of the willing, a group of countries assisting Ukraine in its fight against Russia's aggression.
"I am going to find time to have a one-on-one conversation with President Macron about ways to mitigate any (negative - PAP) effects of Mercosur," Tusk told a press conference, adding that at the moment, Poland was the only EU member state willing to block the deal.
Tusk also explained that Poland would continue to defend the interests of Polish agricultural producers, and had convinced France to jointly prepare a mechanism safeguarding them from any negative impact of Mercosur, which he would later on the day discuss with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
"We agreed that since the French don't want to join us in building this blocking minority, they should at least prepare a defence mechanism," Tusk said. "This means that if any negative signals appear... the European Commission should immediately implement defence mechanisms, i.e., reimpose tariffs," he said.
The EU has negotiated a trade agreement with Mercosur, a trade bloc of five South American nations, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, in a bid to expand Europe's access to third markets amid the global dominance of the United States and the growing influence of China.
On Wednesday, the final text of the deal is to be proposed by the EU for approval by its member states.
Poland has been working on providing the EU-Mercosur deal with safeguards protecting individual member states' markets from any excessive imports of agricultural products from South America, PAP has learnt from an EU source.(PAP)
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