Trade Agreements
Dail Éireann — 2025-10-14
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Martin Heydon (FG), Kildare South

I will not waste lots of time talking about it. A number of EU countries, such as Spain and others, and their ministers for agriculture speak glowingly of Mercosur. That is a fact. Those meetings are public and open for people to see. I do not need to list the countries in question. We are in the minority at that Council in terms of continually raising concerns around this space. However, we do it because of the sensitivity for our beef sector and others. Previously, others that were in that space with us were the French and Polish, while the Austrians and Italians also have concerns. It requires at least four member states working together as a bloc and that combined they would constitute at least 35% of the population of the EU. If that falls away, there is not that ability to block in that space.
In relation to points made about standards, we should recognise there are two different types of standards here. The SPS standards are our food safety standards which are absolutely non-negotiable. We do not allow hormone-fed beef into Europe. It is the environmental standards that are going to be at odds, and that is what we raised the issues about.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-10-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:04+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-10-14