Brazil's food scandal should have no bearing on ongoing EU-Mercosur free trade talks, European Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan said on Monday while highlighting that an eventual agreement was some way off.
Brazil's food scandal should have no bearing on ongoing EU-Mercosur free trade talks, European Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan said on Monday while highlighting that an eventual agreement was some way off.
Brazil's meat industry has been rocked by a police investigation into corruption involving food inspectors and allegations that rotten products were sold.
European farm groups Copa and Cogeca has said the scandal raised serious concerns about ongoing EU-Mercosur trade talks, which they said could result in a lowering of EU food safety standards.
Hogan, a former Irish minister, told a news conference after a meeting of EU agriculture ministers that the scandal was "a separate issue" from the talks between the EU and the Mercosur countries of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
"It affects Brazil. It doesn't affect all of the other Mercosur countries so it would be quite unfair to link them," Hogan told reporters.
The on-off EU-Mercosur talks were launched more a decade ago, with renewed exchanges in the past year, including an exchange of offers in May 2016.
Hogan said that little clear progress had been made and there was little prospect of a rapid conclusion of talks.
"You can interpret that they've been quite slow and therefore there is no reason to be concerned that we're going to come to a speedy resolution in matters unless there is a considerable lowering of ambition on the part of the Mercosur countries," he said.
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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