The first public celebrations of the EU–Mercosur agreement did not come from Brussels. They came from Brasília. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government moved quickly to frame the deal as a diplomatic victory: Brazil’s return to the centre of global trade, proof of restored credibility, and confirmation of strategic relevance after years of isolation. The agreement was presented as an achievement to be welcomed, defended, and claimed.
That framing matters. It set the tone for everything that followed.
After twenty-five years of negotiation, EU–Mercosur did not advance through convergence or consensus. It advanced through acceleration. What unfolded in recent weeks was not the natural conclusion of a long diplomatic process but a procedural compression designed to outrun opposition, parliamentary friction, and material scrutiny. Speed functioned as a political instrument rather than an administrative necessity.
The method followed a familiar pattern. Technical adjustments were framed as marginal. Political objections were reclassified as sectoral. Environmental and social concerns were deferred to interpretative declarations and side letters whose legal force remains deliberately weak. As resistance persisted, urgency replaced argument. The agreement was presented as unavoidable, as the last train leaving the station, as a geopolitical imperative immune to delay.
This approach reflected awareness of political vulnerability rather than confidence in the treaty’s merits.
Lula and EU–Mercosur: A 25-Year Arc of Strategic Ambiguity
The negotiations began in 1999, when Lula was still in opposition. The Workers’ Party viewed large-scale trade liberalisation with suspicion, particularly agreements perceived as structurally asymmetrical. Concerns focused on land concentration, the marginalisation of small producers, and the consolidation of Brazil’s role as an exporter of primary commodities. Food security and sovereignty were treated as political priorities rather than downstream effects of growth.
After Lula’s election in 2002, Brazil maintained a cautious posture. Negotiations formally continued, yet the agreement was not prioritised. Political capital was invested in strengthening Mercosur internally, expanding South–South cooperation, and building multilateral alliances beyond the transatlantic axis. EU agricultural protectionism and limited reciprocity remained unresolved obstacles. During this period, domestic food security policies, including Fome Zero, were positioned as central state functions.
By the late 2000s, negotiations had reached a stalemate. The impasse did not provoke a push to force a conclusion. The agreement remained peripheral to Lula’s strategic agenda. The right to food entered Brazil’s legal and policy architecture during this broader phase, treated as a governing principle rather than a compensatory slogan.
In subsequent years, the agreement evolved rhetorically. Sustainability language expanded, environmental chapters multiplied, and the treaty was reframed as values-based. These additions altered presentation without transforming the underlying economic structure.
The most aggressive acceleration occurred under Jair Bolsonaro. During that period, Lula and the PT criticised the agreement openly, pointing to deforestation, attacks on Indigenous rights, and the dismantling of food security institutions. The treaty became associated with deregulation and extractivism rather than partnership.
Lula’s return to power marked a shift in trade strategy. EU–Mercosur was re-embraced as a geopolitical signal: Brazil’s reintegration into global diplomacy and its renewed relevance. Environmental assurances and political declarations were presented as sufficient adjustments. The economic architecture remained largely unchanged.
Across this arc, Lula’s position remained pragmatic and context-dependent. What shifted was the role assigned to the right to food. It moved from a constraint shaping trade policy to a parallel discourse running alongside it.
Trade Liberalisation and Food System Capture
The agreement reinforces an export-oriented agricultural model associated with land concentration, monoculture expansion, chemical dependency, and displacement of small-scale producers. It privileges scale, volume, and price competition across profoundly unequal food systems. Pressure on local food economies intensifies in both regions.
The right to food concerns the capacity of societies to determine how food is produced, distributed, and consumed in socially just and ecologically sustainable ways. A trade agreement that intensifies competition without asymmetric safeguards reallocates vulnerability. For Mercosur countries, dependence on commodity exports deepens. For the European Union, supply chains are secured while environmental and social costs are externalised.
Food is treated as an input within global trade circuits rather than as a political commons governed by rights.
Procedural Governance and Democratic Erosion
The ratification strategy has been equally revealing. Legal fragmentation, narrowed parliamentary pathways, and reclassification of competences have reduced the number of effective veto points. Democratic engagement has been treated as a variable to be managed rather than a requirement to be respected.
Food policy intersects with land, labour, health, culture, and survival. Shielding such decisions from public contestation reflects a deliberate political choice. Participation and resilience remain prominent in official language, while institutional shortcuts ensure that these principles exert minimal influence on outcomes.
The European Farce
The final political momentum emerged through a substitution bordering on parody. The agreement advanced with the approval of Giorgia Meloni, replacing the previously central role of Emmanuel Macron. One government grounded in technocratic liberalism stepped aside; another, rooted in reactionary nationalism, stepped in. The trajectory continued uninterrupted.
This transition clarified the nature of the agreement. Support no longer required elaborate moral justification. The treaty moved forward on the basis of effectiveness rather than values. A project long presented as progressive reached political viability through a government unconcerned with those claims.
The alignment followed the agreement’s internal logic: competitiveness prioritised over rights, speed over deliberation, trade expansion over food system integrity.
And Now the Silence
This returns the question to Lula’s celebration—and to those who echo it.
For years, sections of international civil society have treated Brazil under Lula as a near-mythical reference point: a right-to-food Eldorado, invoked reflexively in conferences, panels, and declarations. Any Brazilian policy bearing Lula’s signature was presumed compatible with food justice by default. Structural analysis was replaced by admiration. Contradictions were suspended out of loyalty.
EU–Mercosur now tests that posture.
The agreement is not marginal. It is not technical. It reshapes food systems, land use, and agricultural power relations across two continents. Lula’s government has chosen to celebrate it. The treaty advances with the consent of governments openly hostile to democratic and social norms. The shortcut has been taken, visibly and deliberately.
What happens now to those always ready to applaud?
Will the contradiction be acknowledged, debated, and confronted?
Or will silence prevail, accompanied by the familiar reassurance that domestic food policy and international trade belong to separate worlds?
The right to food cannot survive as a talisman invoked selectively, applauded when convenient and ignored when costly. If it carries political meaning, it must also carry consequences. Civil society cannot claim seriousness while refusing to look at what is now plainly on the table.
EU–Mercosur does not merely expose a policy choice. It exposes a test of coherence.
The conflict between the EU–Mercosur agreement and the right to food is not rhetorical, ideological, or accidental. It is structural. It lies in how the agreement reorganises food systems, reallocates power, and constrains public policy space. The problem is not a lack of safeguards on paper; it is the economic logic the treaty locks in.
1. The Right to Food Is About Systems, Not Output
The right to food, as defined in international law, concerns availability, accessibility, adequacy, sustainability, and cultural appropriateness. It does not reduce food to caloric output or export capacity. It concerns who controls land, how food is produced, who benefits economically, and whether states retain the ability to regulate food systems in the public interest.
EU–Mercosur approaches food primarily as a tradable commodity. Its objective is to expand market access, reduce tariffs, and increase competitiveness. These goals are not neutral when applied to agriculture. They privilege actors able to operate at scale, absorb price volatility, and comply with transnational standards—usually large agribusinesses.
Small-scale producers, diversified farms, and territorially embedded food systems do not compete on these terms. The agreement therefore reshapes food systems away from those most aligned with the right to food.
2. Export Orientation Displaces Domestic Food Security
The agreement strengthens an export-led agricultural model in Mercosur countries. Increased access to the EU market incentivises land use toward export crops and livestock destined for external consumption rather than domestic food needs.
This has several consequences:
Food insecurity is not primarily caused by insufficient production. It is caused by unequal access to land, income, and decision-making. EU–Mercosur intensifies precisely these dynamics.
3. Asymmetry Is Built Into the Agreement
The agreement treats the EU and Mercosur as formally equal partners while ignoring structural inequalities.
The European Union retains:
Mercosur countries, by contrast, are positioned primarily as suppliers of raw or minimally processed agricultural commodities.
This asymmetry means competition is not occurring on equal terms. The result is downward pressure on labour conditions, environmental standards, and farm incomes in Mercosur, while European farmers face price competition that undermines local production models. In both cases, food producers are squeezed, and corporate intermediaries benefit.
A trade framework that institutionalises unequal competition conflicts with the obligation to progressively realise the right to food.
4. Policy Space Is Constrained, Not Protected
The right to food requires active public policy: land reform, support for small producers, public procurement, stockholding, price stabilisation, and environmental regulation. Trade agreements affect whether such policies remain legally and economically viable.
EU–Mercosur limits policy space through:
Even where explicit prohibitions are absent, the agreement shifts incentives. Governments are encouraged to prioritise trade compliance over social objectives. Food policy becomes subordinated to trade policy rather than the reverse.
5. Sustainability Chapters Do Not Alter Economic Power
The agreement includes environmental and sustainability language, often cited as evidence of compatibility with food rights. These provisions are largely non-binding and weakly enforceable. They do not override market access commitments, nor do they impose structural limits on export-driven agriculture.
Environmental degradation, deforestation, soil exhaustion, and water depletion directly undermine the right to food over time. Treating these issues as ancillary concerns, addressed through dialogue rather than obligation, fails to meet the standard of policy coherence required under human rights law.
6. Democratic Accountability Is Weakened
The right to food is inseparable from participation. Affected communities must be able to influence food policy decisions. The EU–Mercosur process has moved in the opposite direction: legal complexity, procedural shortcuts, and fragmented ratification have reduced democratic oversight.
Food system transformation is being decided through trade mechanisms insulated from those most affected—farmers, rural workers, Indigenous communities, and low-income consumers. This exclusion is not incidental. It is functional to the agreement’s success.
7. The Core Conflict: Rights Versus Trade Discipline
At its core, the EU–Mercosur agreement treats food as an economic sector governed by competition rules. The right to food treats food as a social good governed by public responsibility.
Where conflicts arise, trade discipline prevails.
The agreement does not integrate the right to food as a binding constraint. It assumes that market expansion will eventually support food security. This assumption has been repeatedly disproven. Hunger persists alongside record agricultural exports. Food insecurity grows even as trade volumes increase.
Conclusion
EU–Mercosur undermines the right to food not because it ignores hunger, but because it reorganises food systems in ways that produce vulnerability while limiting the tools available to address it.
The conflict is structural, predictable, and well documented. It cannot be resolved through side letters, political assurances, or rhetorical commitments. It raises a simple but unavoidable question: whether the right to food is treated as a governing principle or as an optional narrative running alongside trade.
The agreement answers that question clearly.