Karol Nawrocki talks with demonstrators outside the European Union Commission representation in Warsaw, Poland, on January 3, 2025 during a protest of farmers against the European Union’s agricultural policies, the Mercosur agreement and the Green Deal.
Wojtek Radwanski / AFP
The Polish conservative opposition has accused the Tusk government of abandoning farmers.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki met Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome on Thursday, September 4th, holding talks dominated by the controversial free trade agreement between the European Union and the South American Mercosur bloc.
Most of the discussions took place behind closed doors, with both leaders understood to have voiced deep reservations about the potential impact of the deal on Europe’s agricultural sector.
Following the meeting, Marcin Przydacz, head of the Polish president’s Office for International Policy, told reporters that Warsaw and Rome shared concerns about the EU opening its markets too widely to South American products.
He said European farming should not be allowed to be dominated by “foreign, non-European states,” and added that Poland would press for solutions that “eliminate the harmful elements of EU agricultural policy and excessive market opening.”
The European Commission approved the long-delayed trade pact with Mercosur on September 3rd, triggering a storm of criticism across the continent.
Under the deal, Mercosur countries will progressively remove import duties on 91% of EU goods including cars, chemicals, wine and chocolate, which currently face tariffs of up to 35%.
In return, agricultural giant Brazil and its neighbours would be able to sell meat, sugar, honey, soybeans, and other products to Europe with fewer restrictions.
This raised fears that a flow of cheaper and substandard farming goods would undercut European producers.
The deal still requires endorsement by the European Parliament and a qualified majority of member states in the European Council.
Polish liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk has pledged that Poland will vote against the deal, but acknowledged that Warsaw cannot currently muster the blocking minority needed to stop the agreement.
Conservative opposition politicians accuse the government of failing to maintain the blocking coalition that existed before December 2023. Przydacz insisted that rebuilding such an alliance was now an urgent priority.
President Nawrocki is expected to raise the matter with French President Emmanuel Macron during a planned visit to Paris later this month, as well as in Berlin.
Law and Justice MEP Tobiasz Bocheński berated the government for allowing Germany to orchestrate a more effective coalition in favour of the accord, to the detriment of Polish farmers.
Confederation MEP Anna Bryłka went further, calling Donald Tusk a “disgusting liar” for suggesting that France had abandoned efforts to block the deal. She argued that a coalition was still possible if leaders had the will to pursue it.
As we previously reported, criticism is by no means confined to Poland.
In France, right-wing opposition leader Marine Le Pen branded the pact “devastating for French farming” and urged Emmanuel Macron to veto it. The Irish Farmers’ Association accused the EU of hypocrisy for enforcing strict environmental rules at home while importing lower-standard goods from abroad.
Zoltán Kottász is a journalist for europeanconservative.com, based in Budapest. He worked for many years as a journalist and as the editor of the foreign desk at the Hungarian daily, Magyar Nemzet. He focuses primarily on European politics.
