By signing a trade agreement with the South American trade bloc Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay), the European Union has missed a chance to stand firm on European principles. Slow Food Europe regrets that the main concerns, earlier expressed by more than 300 organizations over the deteriorating human rights and environmental situation in Brazil, have been ignored.

Since Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil’s President at the beginning of 2019, his government has dismantled environmental protections, tolerated incursions by armed invaders on Indigenous Peoples’ lands, and overseen a dramatic rise of deforestation rates in the Amazon, undermining years of progress...

...Even though the details of the agreement are yet to be revealed, it is clear the Mercosur deal has opened the door to cheap beef and poultry imports from South American countries, putting the livelihoods of European meat producers at risk...

...Slow Food Europe is also concerned that the Mercosur trade deal will also have real effects on those who did not sit at the negotiating table – farmers and smallholders in third-party countries.