Save Romania Union (USR) MEP Dan Barna said on Wednesday that the European Parliament's vote in favour of sending the Mercosur agreement to the Court of Justice of the EU is very good news for China and probably for Donald Trump, and also that it showed the EP's inability to understand the strategic importance of the EU's opening up to other markets.
"With today's vote, Parliament has only shown that it does not understand the big political stakes," Barna said after the vote won by a difference of ten votes from the camp that voted for the CJEU's notification on the EU's agreement with Mercosur.
"It was, indeed, a union of extremes. We have seen the massive votes from both the Communists and the extreme right. There were a few votes and the majority are enough. There were practically ten votes. Basically, we can say, the ten votes of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) made this difference. The referral to the Court shows that, in fact, Europe remains dependent on the idea of bureaucracy, on the idea of let's not take decisions on high stakes," said the USR MEP, who is vice-president of the Renew group in the EP.
He said that the agreement with Mercosur is for the European economy "a breath of oxygen, not a bubble of oxygen", given the opening to a market the size of Mercosur, with hundreds of millions of inhabitants.
Barna added that the vote was divided inside all political groups, including Renew Europe, where the Irish and French voted for the referral to the Court, but said the explanation was "small domestic stakes".
"Exactly what PSD did in Romania. Because there is a distinct discussion and I want to be very clear: the problems of Romanian agriculture, the problems of European agriculture, the problems of the common agricultural policy are neither solved nor aggravated by Mercosur, it was used as a valve to deceive people in a direction in which extremist rhetoric was very easily falling. Because the impact on beef, on chicken, we are talking about 1.6% of European production, we are talking about two beef steaks for each European citizen, that is, the impact is very small in reality," Barna said.
He added that one explanation could be the poor communication of the European Commission and President Ursula von der Leyen on the benefits of the agreement.
"Neither the commission nor the president of the EC have managed to communicate the importance of this agreement, so the letters that have come in the last few days, from the industry - from the automotive industry, from the chemical industry, from the pharmaceutical industry, from the agricultural industry after all, the cheese producers, wine producers, for whom the Mercosur market means an opening to a huge market - these messages came late, were poorly communicated as against to a fight of the extreme right, of this anti-European sovereignty, which was very vocal and very foamy," said the USR MEP.
"It is what happened in Romania as well, with PSD climbing on this fear of farmers and speculated on the current context, hoping for an ephemeral and very small victory, of very small benefits. Because the fundamental problem of this vote is that yes, in some states, valid in France and Poland, the internal political benefits are much smaller in reality and for a much shorter duration compared to the impact that this agreement has," he added.
Barna said he was convinced that the agreement will enter into force "but this delay, for a few months at least, does not bring any benefit and continues to keep the European economy stiff and without the possibility of developing on that market."
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