Paris is rapidly running out of both the time and political clout required to halt a European Union trade deal with South America, only adding to the woes of President Emmanuel Macron, who is likely to face a vitriolic backlash from France's all-powerful farmers, reports Politico.
The European Commission and EU heavyweights such Germany and Spain make little secret of their desire to close a deal before the end of the year with the Mercosur bloc of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and newcomer Bolivia. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says the deal should be done "quickly."
France has long been the most dogged holdout on the accord, fearing that a deluge of beef and other agricultural imports from giant Latin American producers will undermine French farmers, one of the country's most politically powerful groups.
In previous years, Paris had sufficient political capital in the EU to hold an effective veto over the pact, but this influence is now waning after Macron's thumping defeats in this year's EU and national elections. The danger for Paris is that other EU countries will now simply enact the accord over France's head, and the political impact of that will be explosive.
“It is hard to see how the French government and its weak political support in the French parliament could survive a Mercosur trade agreement,” said François Chimits, an economist at the French research center CEPII.