Patricia Ryan
Question:66. Deputy Patricia Ryan asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation the status of the support for the Mercosur trade deal. [15566/20]
View answerTuesday, 14 July 2020
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In June 2019, the EU reached political agreement in their trade negotiations with the Mercosur region (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay). The EU-Mercosur Agreement is the EU’s largest trade deal to date. The Agreement covers a population of over 770 million with trade in goods and services valued at €122 billion. It aims to reduce and, in some areas, eliminate trade tariffs between the EU and the Mercosur region. In 2019, Ireland exported approximately €0.5 billion worth of goods to the Mercosur region. In 2018 – the latest year for which data is available – services exports to Mercosur totalled almost €1.3 billion. Irish goods exports to Mercosur have grown on average by 2% annually and Mercosur accounts for 0.3% of total Irish goods exports in 2019.
It is anticipated that the EU-Mercosur Agreement will allow Irish exporters to expand faster and will open opportunities across a wide range of sectors – in business services, chemicals, machinery, medical devices and processed food and dairy. The Agreement once ratified, will see a significant reduction or elimination of tariffs and barriers to trade that will allow a cross flow of trading and investment between Ireland and the rest of the EU, and the Mercosur region. The EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement will make exports from Ireland more attractive and potentially increase the demand for Irish products.
The Programme for Government Our Shared Future committed the Government to an Economic and Sustainability Impact Assessment of the EU-Mercosur trade deal. That Impact Assessment will produce both a robust analysis of the potential economic impacts as well as the social, human rights and environmental impacts that the trade agreement offers. It will also include a wide-ranging consultation process and engagement with relevant stakeholders and is being produced by an independent economic consultancy firm with the aim of helping to inform future decisions by Government on the Agreement.
I might add that European Trade Commissioner, Phil Hogan, recently reported to the European Parliament's "INTA" International Trade Committee that the final legal texts of the Agreement have been reviewed by lawyers from both parties, a process called “legal scrubbing”, and that the final document will now be translated into the various EU and Mercosur languages, a process that is estimated will be completed by October. After this, the Agreement will be submitted by the Commission to the EU Council for the approval of EU Member States and to the European Parliament. My Department's intention, working in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine, is for Government to have the aforementioned Economic and Sustainability Impact Assessment available to us to assist our decision-making on the Agreement in the Autumn.