'Weeks when decades happen'

Quoting Lenin in Irish Farmers Monthly, I’d say is a first, but someone quoted one of his aphorisms to me the other day and I was struck by how well it described the last eight weeks in Irish agriculture. It goes like this: ‘There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen’.

I am not going to write about or discuss any matters around the Bord Bia issue, except to say that we all need to start working in the one direction, and that direction must be towards delivering the maximum return for farmers. It must be about securing the incomes and welfare of farm families over the short, medium, and long term.

Firm opposition

Those are the very same reasons why we took such a firm position against the Mercosur trade agreement from the very moment it surfaced as an option for the EU. Contrary to much of the uninformed commentary in recent weeks, our opposition had nothing to do with the proposal to import Brazilian beef into the EU, or even Ireland. The ICMSA is adamantly for free trade and so should every Irish farmer; we export over 90 per cent of all the food we produce!

But what we are against is the importation of beef that has been produced to lower environmental, food-safety, and traceability standards than ours, and against which we would be expected to compete. And make no mistake; that is the reality that underpins the proposal to import 99,000 tonnes of beef into the EU per annum at a lower tariff. Where is the fairness in that?

What standards? 

The Commission never really made any secret of the fact that they accepted that the Mercosur beef was going to be of lower standards than ours. ‘Shure they [Mercosur countries] will do the best they can’ seemed to be the Commission’s take on it, backed up by the argument that in economic terms, we’d get more from selling to them than they would selling to us. But what kind of principle is that? What kind of consistency is that? What kind of environmental policy can be based on the view that ‘they’ll do their best’. There is a standard, or there isn’t. 

Risking the greater good

That very simple principle didn’t seem to concern the commentariat and economists who queued up in the media to lambaste the Government for voting against Mercosur and (apparently) sacrifice the broader national interest for the so-called narrow sectoral preference of the ‘farm lobby’. The impression was carefully fostered that Irish farming was against free trade (we’re not) but that our Government’s indulgence of the ‘farm lobby’ would be overturned in the European Parliament (it wasn’t). 

The news that the European Parliament had referred Mercosur to the Court of Justice of the European Union came as a very rude shock to all the indignant economists and ‘experts’ who had assured us that at that calm, international level – safely insulated from the ‘parish-pump’ influence of the farm organisations – better judgement would prevail and the corporations so eager to open up South American markets on a free-trade basis could safely pop their champagne corks and begin celebrating. Alas, a majority of MEPs didn’t like what they were being asked to rubber stamp and the referral to the court represents the fact that the MEPs, too, thought that at the very least, if the EU was going to force its own farmers to produce beef and other meats to a set standard, then other countries wishing to export into the EU should have to meet that same standard. It’ll be up to the judges to decide, and not, for instance, the CEOs of Mercedes or Siemens.

Realisation

So, it wasn’t ‘just’ the Irish MEPs who had their ears bent by the ICMSA and the other farm organisations. There was a realisation in the Parliament that in the area of international trade and treaties – no less than in any other area of human relationships – consistency is a virtue.

The Irish Government left it late, but it did the right thing, eventually. The referral to the European Court of Justice vindicates Ireland’s position and should give the economists who opined so freely a reason to pause and examine their own rationale. At the end of the day, the EU has laws, and they must be followed by everyone.