EU and Mercosur miss a trick at Rio summit devoid of trade talks

Good morning. As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its 1,000th day, G20 powers signalled weakening support for Kyiv in a joint statement issued overnight that was stripped of criticisms of Moscow agreed by the same countries a year ago.

Today, I report from Rio de Janeiro on the conspicuous absence of progress on the EU’s much-vaunted Mercosur trade deal, and our Rome bureau chief has a dispatch on Giorgia Meloni’s war on surrogacy going international.

Trade show

You might have thought that a meeting of the most powerful leaders of the EU and South America, in Brazil, would be a great moment to make progress on a long-stalled trade deal between the two continents. You’d have been wrong.

Context: The EU has been negotiating a trade deal with the Mercosur group of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia for more than two decades. An agreement would unite a market of 780mn people and save businesses in Europe more than €4bn annually in tariffs.

Donald Trump’s election as US president and his threats to impose sweeping tariffs on imports has given the EU fresh impetus to seal new trade deals. But at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro — featuring the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the EU presidents and all Mercosur members — it barely registered.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen raised it during her bilateral meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday, but it was not a topic during the various bilateral meetings and informal chats yesterday, officials briefed on the talks said.

It doesn’t help that EU domestic politics has delayed the formal swearing-in of von der Leyen for a second term as commission president, and the installation of her new trade commissioner. Officials yesterday said that was the priority, and that significant progress on the deal would probably only be seen in December.

EU negotiators met their Latin American counterparts in Brasília in September, urged on by 11 European capitals to strike a deal that could be put to the bloc’s member states for a vote of approval. Technical discussions were ongoing, officials said.

Proponents say that the deal will allow the EU to compete with major Chinese investment, restate the bloc‘s free-trade and multilateral principles in the face of Trump’s arrival, and send a message to the incoming president.

That said, the failure to use the Rio summit to make progress on the deal suits French President Emmanuel Macron, its biggest critic. He believes it will cause environmental damage and subject farmers to unfair competition.

But if a deal is struck with Mercosur and then put to a vote of EU capitals, a majority can outvote Macron. No surprise, then, that his foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot vented yesterday that the agreement was “unacceptable as it stands, for democratic reasons”.

Chart du jour: Fire at will

US President Joe Biden’s authorisation for Ukraine to launch limited strikes into Russia’s Kursk region using US-made Atacms long-range missiles has upped the pressure on European allies to follow suit.

Extraterritorial

Surrogacy is now considered a “universal crime” in Italy, leaving dozens of couples undergoing the process abroad in anxious limbo, writes Amy Kazmin.

Context: Surrogacy has been illegal in Italy since 2004, punishable by up to two years in prison and fines of up to €600,000. But Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government is determined to stop Italians from having children via surrogacy even in foreign jurisdictions where the practice is legal.

Under the harsh new law that came into force yesterday, Italians whose babies are carried by a surrogate anywhere in the world could face up to two years in prison, and fines of up to €1mn.

But the fight over the issue isn’t over yet.

Lawyers from the Luca Coscioni Association, an organisation that works on human rights issues in medical care and scientific research, have vowed to challenge the law.

“We are ready to defend all couples damaged by this unjust and unreasonable law,” the association said, vowing to battle in courts to “reestablish an opportunity offered by science”.

The association says it has received pleas for help from around 50 couples at various stages of the surrogacy process, from initial paperwork to collecting reproductive cells or actually awaiting the births.

Among them are same-sex couples seeking to have children and heterosexual couples where, for instance, the woman can’t carry a child due to serious illness.

Meloni, who believes only heterosexual couples should have children, has in the past targeted LGBT+ families. Her government argues the surrogacy law cracks down on “procreation tourism” and protects women from exploitation.

While the new rules don’t apply retroactively, the fate of families now going through the surrogacy process remains ambiguous.

What to watch today

1. EU defence ministers meet.

2. EU ministers for general affairs meet.

3. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses European parliament, at 11am.

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