On 11.3. Economics Minister Robert Habeck and Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir traveled to Brazil. The aim of their trip is to visit the Amazon and to take part in the German-Brazilian Business Days (March 12-14) in Belo Horizonte. The controversial EU-Mercosur trade agreement is a major focus of this trip. Representatives of various corporations that would benefit from the ratification of the agreement will also be present at the business days, including VW and Bayer.
On this occasion, the Network for Fair World Trade calls for mobilization against the EU-Mercosur Agreement in its Latin America year and criticizes the German government’s plan to agree to the ratification of the agreement despite all resistance from scientists, farmers, human rights and environmental protection organizations .
“We must learn lessons from the Corona crisis and the brutal war of aggression against Ukraine and end dependencies on states and corporations. Especially in agriculture and food production, ‘business as usual’ is not an option. For us, fair trade and global solidarity means: ending farm deaths, strengthening farmers’ rights and farms worldwide. We demand binding and sanctionable social and ecological criteria for imports and exports, such as cost-covering producer prices, animal welfare, climate protection, freedom from genetic engineering, no climate-damaging land use and no violations of human rights,” says Georg Janßen, federal manager of the working group for rural agriculture (AbL) eV
“The planned agreement stands for a backward-looking mobility and trade policy – an additional agreement will not change that at all. Nevertheless, tariffs on cars with internal combustion engines and on raw materials for car production would be phased out. The areas under cultivation for soybeans and sugar cane as energy crops would also be expanded even more at the expense of the climate, human rights and food sovereignty,” says Hanni Gramann, world trade expert at Attac Germany.
“The EU-Mercosur agreement promotes products that harm nature and the climate, such as beef, pesticides and combustion cars. This deal is fueling the climate crisis and the massive extinction of species. We demand consistent climate protection from the federal government: That must mean rejecting this outdated, harmful poison treaty,” adds Lis Cunha, Greenpeace trade expert.
