The French Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, promised French farmers this Sunday that his Government will adopt a “firmer, more offensive” stance towards the European Union (EU), both to prevent imbalances in trade agreements, such as the one that the EU intends to sign with the Mercosur countries, and in changes to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
In an open letter, published on his social networks on the eve of two days of meetings with agricultural unions, Lecornu assured that understands the feeling of injustice in the sector who opposes the agreement with the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), the changes in the CAP, a new tax on fertilizers and who has also led protests for the slaughter of cattle herds affected by the outbreak of lumpy skin disease (LSD) in the country.
“For too long, A feeling has dominated his profession: that of profound injusticethat of structural inequality, that of a cluster of distant norms that, at times, have lost their common sense,” the prime minister wrote in the letter, also published in several newspapers.
Regarding trade agreements, Lecornu states that “They will be questioned every time they become unbalanced“, as France has done with the one that should be signed on January 12 between the EU and Mercosur – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia in the accession process -, after its signature was postponed last December.
The prime minister urged the EU in his letter to “rapidly increase” its border controls for all products that “do not comply with the Union’s sanitary and phytosanitary standards”.
In fact, Lecornu had announced this Sunday morning that France will soon suspend the import of avocados, mangoes, guavas, citrus fruits, grapes and apples coming from South America or any other place that contain substances prohibited in the European Union, including the fungicides mancozeb, thiophanate-methyl and carbendazim or glufosinate present in herbicides.
It is expected that your Government issue a decree next Tuesday to suspend imports of products from South America that contain residues of those five substances prohibited in the EU.
“It’s just a first stage. We will continue to fully use the legal levers at our disposalboth for fruits and vegetables and imported meat that does not respect the sanitary and phytosanitary standards of the European Union,” he noted in his letter.
And he added: “It is not acceptable to tolerate the presence of prohibited substances in France that enter our markets”.
“It’s common sense,” said Lecornu, who noted that “Import controls will be massively tightenedat the borders and in the territory” and called on the EU to quickly extend this measure to the entire European market.
“The principle will be simple: the same rules for everyone, the same controls for everyone“he stressed.
Regarding the changes in the Common Agricultural Policy, which French farmers fear will mean a 20% cut, the French Prime Minister was also blunt: “The CAP budget will not decrease, neither today nor tomorrow“Therefore, there will not be a cent less for agricultural income,” he maintained.
Rising fertilizer prices linked to the implementation of the Carbon Emissions Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) are also worrying farmers. “I have asked the president of the European Commission to quickly find a solution to temporarily neutralize the effects of this new mechanism on fertilizer prices“Lecornu noted.
