Europe: Temporary ban on Brazilian meat and honey ban highlights EU-Mercosur risks, says ECVC
An EU ban on beef, poultry, honey, egg and fish imports from Brazil came into force on 3 September after the country failed to guarantee controls over antimicrobial use in the production chain. This decision demonstrates the dangers of the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement (FTA) and the unfair competition it creates, underlined by European Coordination Via Campesina’s (ECVC) long-standing position.
The ban, however, will not change the structural impacts of the FTA on agriculture, especially in the sensitive sectors concerned by the decision. Consequently, suspending the imports of products that do not meet EU standards is insufficient; ECVC instead demands to an end to the free trade agreement with Brazil. Similarly, the provisional application of the EU-Mercosur FTA without a vote from the European Parliament remains a democratic scandal. After MEPs demanded a legal opinion on the conformity of EU-Mercosur with the EU treaties in a vote in January, any application must be delayed until after the opinion of the Court of Justice of the EU and a vote to ratify in the EP. This thorough and transparent democratic process is necessary to ensure issues and impacts of the FTA can be properly raised and addressed.
Even before the end of the negotiations with Mercosur countries, extensive proof was available showing that hormones and antibiotics could not be reliably traced in different sectors, such as beef production [1]. It is thus puzzling that the Commission is implementing this ban now, a few months after having decided to provisionally apply the FTA, despite the fact that the EU decided to block imports using antimicrobials in the production chain since 2019. This highlights the hypocrisy of the European Commission and its duplicitous attempts to control the use of phytosanitary products that are banned in the EU but produced legally in Europe for export and use in Brazil and elsewhere.
Farmers’ right to a fair income should not be reliant on the sole decision from the Commission to temporarily ban dangerous imports that undermine European farming. The EU-Mercosur FTA is accelerating the imports of these sensitive products for farmers [2] while limiting the capacity of the EU to take regulatory actions in these markets. For example, the FTA contains a rebalancing mechanism specifically designed to prevent both parties from implementing regulatory tools that affect the benefits of the FTA for either party, meaning Brazil could use it to challenge and overrule the ban. This mechanism was a key area of focus in the request by MEPs to the Court of Justice of the EU to check the conformity of EU-Mercosur with the EU treaties [3].
The European Commission cannot choose to ignore the concerns of farmers and undemocratically apply the EU-Mercosur agreement on the one hand, then claim to be protecting EU agriculture from a threat created by its own free-trade agenda. Instead, policymakers must defend democracy, food sovereignty and farmer’s rights, and put a stop to the EU-Mercosur agreement all together!
[1] https://www.safefoodadvocacy.eu/brazilian-hormone-beef-a-major-stumbling-block-ahead-of-mercosur-talks-at-g20/
[2] Poultry imports from Brazil have increased by nearly 50% in 2026 first half compared to the same period in 2025: https://datamarnews.com/noticias/eu-mission-to-assess-brazils-poultry-honey-companies/
[3] https://www.eurovia.org/press-releases/farmers-to-mobilise-in-strasbourg-to-request-cjeu-opinion-on-eu-mercosur-european-democracy-and-role-of-european-parliament-must-be-respected/