Fresh from the latest round of Mercosur negotiations, Phil Hogan was on home turf on Friday to speak at the Professional Agricultural Contractors of Ireland conference on Smart Farming, in Kilkenny.

“We didn’t close the gap on important issues: market access, standards, geographical indications, maritime issues, cars. These are all important to Europe,” Commisser for Agriculture Phil Hogan told the Irish Farmers Journal.

“There was a very big request made by the Mercosur countries over the last year and repeated again this week, which we resisted. So there were no formal offers made on any side, and we are waiting for four more weeks now to see if the Mercosur countries can solve their internal difficulties in relation to having a co-ordinated and coherent set of proposals.”

The next round of negotiations will be taking place the week beginning 5 March, in Paraguay. Hogan is confident that the Commissioners involved in the negotiations will not accept Mercosurs’ requests on agricultural products, because they are “unreasonable”.

However, he said that Europe will likely have to increase its offer of 70,000t of market access for beef.

“I think we will have to increase a little bit, but at the end of the day it will depend on what they are going to offer us in return,” Hogan said. “We haven’t made any progress around areas such as dairy. So the ball is in the Mercosur court.”

Put simply, will there be a trade deal with Mercosur? Hogan says he doesn’t know. He was more optimistic about his upcoming business delegation to China.

“If we can get access for beef into China, it happens immediately. If there is a deal done with Mercosur, for example, it won’t happen for 10 years.”

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