Pressure to ratify the EU-Mercosur trade agreement is mounting on Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer, as the industry and the parts of his own party urged him to lift his veto.
As the leaders of the Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) gathered in Brussels on Monday to meet their EU counterparts, Nehammer reiterated his opposition to the trade deal with the bloc of Mercosur states, much to the disdain of the industry and economic wing within his party.
“Our position is unchanged,” he told journalists ahead of the summit, adding that even within the EU, there would still be “intense discussions”.
However, Nehammer’s party, the centre-right ÖVP, appears split on the matter, with parts of it urging the government to ratify the deal.
“We, as representatives of the economy in the Austrian People’s Party, will do our utmost to achieve ratification on the part of Austria,” ÖVP MP and economics spokesperson Peter Haubner told EURACTIV on Monday.
“Concluding the trade agreement diversifies and secures supply chains as well as strategic raw materials, also to advance climate protection here at home,” Haubner added.
Pressure from the industry to ratify the Mercosur is also mounting, as Austria would be “increasingly isolated in its undifferentiated blockade attitude within the European Union,” President of the Federation of Austrian Industries (IV) Georg Knill said in a statement.
Moreover, Austria’s Chamber of Commerce (WKÖ), whose president is also the chairman of the ÖVP Economic Association and the economic wing within the ÖVP, spoke out clearly in favour of the trade agreement.
However, the Austrian Farmers’ Union, considered the most powerful sub-organisation of the ÖVP, is still heavily opposed to the deal, with Agriculture Minister Norbert Totschnig being the most prominent critic of the free trade agreement.
“The Mercosur agreement would put pressure on our family farmers and, by extension, on European supply security”, Totschnig told Kurier in April.
The EU and the Mercosur countries had already reached a political agreement on the deal in 2019, with only pending ratification from both sides, which means making major changes to the deal at this stage poses challenges due to formal reasons.
Therefore, unless the entire deal is renegotiated, the agreement can no longer be changed. Totschnig, however, vowed not to accept anything short of a renegotiation to change his position.
Moreover, the government is bound by a 2019 parliamentary vote in which the then newly concluded deal was rejected.
(Chiara Swaton | EURACTIV.de)
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