Mercosur: Pesticides are leaving Europe
One of the main arguments against the European Commission's plan to "create the world's largest free market" with Mercosur is the claim by many agricultural and environmental organizations that food grown with pesticides banned within the EU will enter Europe. But behind this unfair competition lies a key question: who produces these banned toxins that are then used in South America? The answer is paradoxical: a very significant portion is manufactured in Europe itself..
To be able to confirm this, the journalistic group Unearthed and the Swiss NGO Public Eye requested access to the export notifications that European companies must submit according to the Rotterdam ConventionAlthough these figures are estimates prior to actual exports, they constitute the most reliable source. According to their reportIn 2018, approximately 81,600 tons of banned pesticides were exported to 85 non-EU countries. Naturally, organizations like the South African one... Women on Farms Project (WFP) They denounced the fact that a large part of these exports go to impoverished countries, saying it "reveals a racist and colonial way of thinking." And although the European Commission promised To curb this practice, data from 2024 shows a 50% increase compared to 2018.
Ecologists in Action This report has been analyzed from the perspective of Spain, which, along with Germany and Belgium, leads this industry: in 2023, nearly 17,000 tons of banned pesticides were authorized for export, with destinations including Mercosur. In total, 23 banned substances were handled, including fungicides harmful to developing fetuses and insecticides that cause bee mortality. And in our country, we cannot claim to have stopped using them either. Annual reports Pesticide detection data from the Ebro River Basin Authority not only alerts us to high levels of pesticides in the rivers, but also to the presence of some of these 23 prohibited substances.
This information identifies the companies that request export authorizations. Beyond some local companies, multinationals such as Bayer and Corteva appear, and in other European countries, BASF and Syngenta. This is no coincidence: these four multinationals control more than half of all global pesticide sales and They lead the production of the most controversialAt the same time, thanks to their extremely powerful lobby, they play a decisive role in the political decisions made by the European Commission.
The real problem with expanding free trade is that only large corporations benefit, regardless of their location. Whether it's exporting avocados from Chile to Catalonia for re-export to Northern Europe, or exporting soybeans from Brazil to Catalonia to be processed into pork for export to the Chinese market. And, as we've seen, it also applies to selling the pesticides that make this model possible.
Free trade is the pretext for a toxic, corporate, and European-branded business.