Hello, Today the entire political class seems to be against this Mercosur treaty. However, I have the impression that a few years ago it was not like that. Bad memory on my part or change of mind on the part of certain parties? Could you please give us a brief summary of the opinion of the political class during these years of development of this treaty? THANK YOU.
You are absolutely right. Today we see that almost the entire French political class opposes the EU-Mercosur treaty project, as do President Macron and the Barnier government.
This is due, on the one hand, to the specificity of this treaty, whose announced drawbacks (competition for French agriculture) are perceived as much greater than the anticipated benefits (new markets for our industries and services).
But, more generally, the opinion of the political class has evolved enormously in recent years on these issues. When I started working on free trade agreements in 2014, opposition was limited to the radical left, environmentalists and the far right. The right, the centrists and the socialists were generally favorable to these agreements, with different nuances.
But the return in recent years of issues of sovereignty and protectionism, combined with greater attention to the harmful effects of free trade on relocations and inequalities, have shattered this quasi-consensus.
