Client Friends of the Earth Europe
Art Direction Gaëlle Cau, Julie Zalcman
Linkhttps://friendsoftheearth.eu/publication/the-eu-mercosur-splitting-a-democratic-hijack/ Tags illustration, collage, editorial, cover, 2025

«How the European Commission bypasses opposition to controversial trade deal

The free-trade agreement concluded with Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay), would be the biggest trade deal ever adopted by the European Union, covering a market representing 774 millions of citizens.

Trade deals are often described in purely economic terms, but in reality they impact our everyday life on issues as diverse as the quality of the food we eat, jobs, our environment, health and fundamental rights. That is why for many years, civil society organisations have denounced the negative impacts the EU-Mercosur deal would have on climate, deforestation, agriculture and human rights.

The controversy around trade deals is further fuelled by a lack of transparency, democracy, citizen participation, and the involvement of civil society organisations representing the public interest. The final EU-Mercosur text was ultimately published in December 2024. After a legal scrubbing and translation in all the EU languages, the text needs to be ratified by the EU institutions. However, the European Commission already expressed its wish to use a procedural trick to fast-track the ratification and bypass the opposition of several member states and national parliaments: the so-called ‘splitting’.

In this briefing we expose why this splitting manoeuvre of the EU-Mercosur deal damages EU democracy and citizens’ trust in EU institutions.»