Agriculture and trade, Bruno Retailleau
Free trade agreements (Mercosur): Reciprocity clauses imposed in all trade agreements
Direction of change: decrease, compared with current law.
The lever. Position on the European Union's trade agreements, including the agreement with Mercosur: ratification, mirror clauses, rejection. Direction rule: ↑ more agreements or openness; ↓: refusal, protections.
« Porter au niveau européen l'imposition systématique de clauses de réciprocité dans tous les accords commerciaux. »1Translation by the editorsTake to European level the systematic imposition of reciprocity clauses in all trade agreements.
Encoding
No cost-schedule parameter for this position: see the costing for the reason.
Costing
Announced by the candidate
not announced
The programme does not cost this measure.
Published costings
none
No external costing of this position recorded to date.
Our calculation
lever that cannot be costed
Lever with no coefficient in the cost schedule: the position is compared, not costed.
Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule
Current law. EU-Mercosur agreement: the Council authorised its signature on 9 January 2026 by qualified majority, despite France voting against. On 21 January 2026, the European Parliament referred it to the CJEU for an opinion (334 votes for, 324 against, 11 abstentions), which suspends its consent. The Commission announced provisional application of the interim trade agreement from early May 2026; its actual entry into application has not been checked. Trade policy is an exclusive competence of the EU.
Horizon. Not applicable.
Limits. No measurable direct budgetary effect. Customs duties are an EU own resource. Sectoral effects (agriculture, industry) are a matter for impact studies, outside the static costing. A national « sortie » [“exit”] or « refus » [“refusal”] has legal force only for the part of the agreement subject to national ratification.
- Mercosur : le Parlement européen saisit la Cour de justice (Club des juristes / Aleteia, via résultat de recherche), 2026-01-22: « Recours devant la CJUE soutenu « avec 334 voix pour, 324 contre et 11 abstentions » ; la saisine suspend le processus de ratification. »
- Mercosur : la justice de l'UE rejette un recours de la Pologne (Terre-net, via résultat de recherche): « La Commission européenne avait annoncé l'application provisoire de l'accord à compter de début mai 2026. »
How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.
- Projet Retailleau, mesure n°41 « Contrôler davantage les importations et exiger la réciprocité ». Read the programme page.
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