
Mercosur negotiations and Ireland’s share of the EU agriculture spending are seen as the main challenging demands for the new Agriculture minister of the Fine Gael-Labour coalition government in Dublin.

Mercosur (Common market of the South) is a good idea, badly implemented, and it does not have much of “common” and much less of a “market” argues Professor Andres Malamud, researcher at the Lisbon University Social Sciences currently on a lecture tour in Paraguay.

Mercosur central banks’ presidents meeting in Peru last Friday agreed that the task ahead has become ‘more complicated’ because of growing inflationary pressures triggered by soaring food and oil prices.

A robot which categorizes soy bean plants according to their capacity to resist drought and make better use of the water resource has been developed by a bio-technology group of Mercosur researchers in Argentina, with European Union support.

Beef quotas being sought by the Mercosur countries as part of the ongoing negotiations with the EU were simply not acceptable, said Ireland’s Minister for Agriculture, Brendan Smith.

Even when Uruguay and Brazil are in the course of reaching understandings with Argentina regarding the latest trade restrictions to be implemented by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner administration, ‘which are not targeted against Mercosur members’, the Brazilian press presents another angle.

Leaders of Ireland’s three main parties pledged on Monday to oppose any trade deal with Mercosur countries which could damage Irish exports if EU standards of production are not adhered to, reports the Irish Times.

Argentina and Brazil agreed Friday to set up a Monitoring Committee in order to exclude Brazilian products from being affected by the imports non-automatic licence system announced this week by the administration of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

The chairman of the Uruguayan Chamber of Industry, Washington Burghi, warned that Argentina’s decision to restrict imports could be “the beginning of the end” for the Mercosur. However Argentine ambassador in Montevideo said decisions are targeted against Asian imports with the purpose of defending Argentine jobs.

Members from the European Parliament representing rural constituencies have come out strongly against a possible trade deal between Europe and Mercosur arguing that an influx of meat imports could have a devastating impact on the EU beef industry.