European Commission vice-president Jyrki Katainen, and Commissioners for Trade Cecilia Malmström and for Agriculture Phil Hogan were set to meet their Mercosur counterparts on Wednesday night to decide whether to move trade talks to the final signing phase.

Decisions on the most sensitive points, including increasing the EU’s annual beef and poultry imports from the South American bloc by over 200,000t, may be referred to a summit of heads of government in Japan at the weekend.

Farming organisations have hammered their opposition to a Mercosur deal all week, starting with an IFA protest outside the European Commission’s Dublin office on Monday.

Speaking at the National Economic Dialogue (NED) on Wednesday, IFA farm business chair Martin Stapleton said the Mercosur deal would “sell out” agriculture as “a sacrificial lamb for trade” after EU inspectors showed that Brazilian imports fail to meet European standards.

Irish farmers will be expected to plant more trees

ICMSA president Pat McCormack told the NED that increasing beef imports by nearly 100,000t would be fatal to Ireland’s €2.5bn beef exports, which are already under threat from a no-deal Brexit.

It would also make a mockery of the EU’s climate strategy, said ICSA beef chair Edmund Graham: “Irish farmers will be expected to plant more trees. Yet, the importation of more South American beef will lead to further destruction of the rainforest,” he said.

If a deal is struck, attention will turn to the type of meats allowed in at reduced duty rates. The EU’s previous offer was for 70,000t of extra beef imports, divided equally between fresh and frozen products, both including some high-value steak cuts. If the 99,000t now under discussion were to be all steak cuts, they would represent those from 3.3m cattle.

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