Do you pay dearly if you buy cheaply?

Agri-environmental models of the European Union and the Southern Common Market in the light of the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement

Abstract

In order to maintain our competitiveness and our foreign trade export surplus, mapping the opportunities and agricultural policy systems of our competitors was of particular importance during the discussion about the future of the CAP after 2020. The aim of the author's research is to provide inputs for the debate on the future of the CAP and the ratification of the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement through a comparative analysis of the CAP and the agricultural policy of the Mercosur. The paper uses the method of critical discourse analysis and complements the document analysis with targeted, semi-structured, in-depth interviews. In his work, the author first examines the political discourse of EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Phil Hogan between 2014-2019 through the analysis of 20 speeches, on the basis of which he shows how in his political speeches Hogan spoke about the role of agriculture in environmental protection and the future of foreign agricultural trade. He briefly reviews the communication of Mercosur’s Working Group No. 8 in nine files on meetings of the working group in the above period too. The author then presents four in-depth interviews he conducted about the current situation of Hungarian, European, and South American agri-environmental protection, its future, and possible directions for development after the free trade agreement. According to its hypothesis, the main reason for the delay in the EU-Mercosur free trade negotiations is that the agricultural policies of the two integrations show very significant differences in terms of environmental protection measures, and this is noticeably reflected in the discourse of the decision-makers responsible for agricultural policy.