The European Commission plans to put the Mercosur trade agreement into force as soon as possible after the deal was ratified by Argentina and Uruguay.
The controversial trade deal between the EU and four south American countries was signed in January.
Ireland was against the deal, but was outvoted in the Council of the European Union.
The European Commission insists that the agreement will bring huge trading benefits to EU companies and farmers.
The Irish Farmers Association (IFA) fears the Mercosur deal will lead to Brazilian and Argentinian beef flooding the market and cause Irish farmers to go out of business.
The EU agreed special “safeguard provisions” as part of the deal which it believes will prevent that from happening.
This morning, European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, confirmed that she was pushing for the deal to start to come into force.
“In January, the European Council empowered the Commission to provisionally apply the Agreement as from the first ratification by one Mercosur country”, she said.
Yesterday, Uruguay and Argentina became the first countries to ratify the EU-Mercosur Agreement. Brazil and Paraguay are expected to follow soon.
“I have discussed this intensively with Member States, and with Members of the European Parliament. On that basis, the Commission will now proceed with provisional application”, von der Leyen confirmed.
An EU official told NewsIreland.eu that the process would take around two months “after the formal exchange of notifications”.
“The Mercosur Agreement creates a market of 720 million people. It opens countless opportunities. It cuts billions in tariffs. It allows our small and medium-sized businesses to access markets and scale they could only dream of before”, von der Leyen said.
Last month the European Parliament voted to review the legality of the Mercosur deal. MEPs believed that that would put the agreement on hold, but the European Commission is pressing ahead anyway.
The EU says the deal will save European exporters around €4 billion per year in tariffs and open up new markets for exports of cars, pharmaceuticals and food and drink.
Reacting to the announcement from the European Commission, IFA’s President, Francie Gorman, said:
“We have opposed Mercosur for over two decades. The issue we had with the deal then, particularly around traceability and lack of standards, has not gone away.”