“The coalition of countries that had previously, together with Poland and France, effectively blocked the EU-Mercosur agreement – because it was not a blocking minority in the formal sense – has unfortunately been broken by a coalition led by Merz and von der Leyen, with the tacit support of the current Prime Minister Donald Tusk,” said the leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists and former Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, on TV Republika.
On Friday, the Council of the European Union gave its consent to approve the European Union’s agreement with Mercosur. The decision was taken despite protests by farmers in many European countries, including Poland. Demonstrators in Warsaw demanded a meeting with the prime minister. Some of them even went to the Chancellery of the Prime Minister. Donald Tusk, however, did not come out to meet them. Moreover, he said that he had expected a much larger demonstration.
The head of government also tried to place responsibility for concluding the agreement on the previous governments of Law and Justice (PiS) and on the current President of the Republic of Poland, Karol Nawrocki.
Today, when asked about this on TV Republika, Mateusz Morawiecki recalled that in 2019 he had built “a coalition, among others with France and Ireland, which effectively froze the talks at that stage with the Mercosur countries around this agreement.”
“Until the end of our term in office, until 2023, the Mercosur agreement remained quiet. Why? It is enough to recall the statements of Prime Minister Beata Szydło and my own statements from those years – they are in the records, in the documents of the European Council. When I warned against this agreement, when I said that Poland would not agree to it, then Ursula von der Leyen and Chairman Donald Tusk feared that Poland and France would effectively block it, and that is exactly what was happening. This agreement did not exist for 3, 13, 23 years – until 2023. After my successor, the current prime minister, took power, the talks were immediately unblocked. Do you think this is a coincidence? No. The closest ally of the current prime minister, Donald Tusk, is Germany. Germany pushed the hardest for the implementation of this agreement,” Morawiecki stated.
He assessed that the safety clauses attached to the Mercosur agreement “are not real safeguards.”
“Commissioner Marosz Szefcovicz himself wrote that the adoption of safety clauses would enable a ‘faster adoption of the Mercosur agreement’, and Brazil and Argentina are already saying that they have no intention of complying with these safeguard clauses. The year 2019 – the coalition I built effectively blocked the issue. Today, 2025-2026, this agreement is being adopted because Poland does not have the assertive, firm stance that I presented when I was prime minister, when we effectively blocked the migration pact, Mercosur, and the Green Deal. These three initiatives were not only not implemented before December 2023, they were simply shelved. The current prime minister has unfrozen all of this and bears full responsibility for it,” he said.
He described Tusk’s words toward the farmers as “brazen.”
“Farmers decided to protest and were blocked on various roads leading to Warsaw so that there would be fewer of them, they protested in the harshest frost, and yet it was still a significant demonstration in defense of Polish agriculture,” Morawiecki emphasized.
“Donald Tusk, in cooperation with Germany, for whom the EU-Mercosur agreement is the most convenient, led to the adoption of the agreement, and it is to be signed soon. This means difficult times for Polish agriculture. The coalition of countries that had previously, together with Poland and France, effectively blocked it – because it was not a blocking minority in the formal sense – has unfortunately been broken by a coalition led by Merz and von der Leyen, with the tacit support of the current Prime Minister Donald Tusk,” he added.