Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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86. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation when the Mercosur trade agreement will come before Dáil Éireann for ratification. [23725/18]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Common Commercial Policy is an exclusive competence of the European Union under the EU Treaties.  Accordingly, the European Commission acts as lead negotiator on behalf of all EU countries regarding trade agreements with non-EU countries.  Member States, in Council, approve negotiating directives before negotiations begin, are kept informed of developments as the negotiations proceed and have final approval at Council.

The EU is currently negotiating a trade agreement with the four founding members of Mercosur - Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.  If concluded, an EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement would be the EU’s largest trade deal to date, four times the size of the trade agreement with Japan.  These negotiations are potentially at a crucial stage with the next formal round taking place over the 9th to the 13th July in Brussels. Were a deal to be concluded between the EU and Mercosur, the relevant text would proceed to so-called “legal scrubbing”, and translation, a process which can take between several months and up to two years to complete. 

Insofar as ratification is concerned, some EU trade agreements are 'EU-only' meaning that all the policy areas they cover fall under the sole responsibility of the EU institutions.  Other agreements may be presented as 'mixed' where they have areas of shared responsibility between the EU and Member States.  Ratification requirements differ between the two categories. Only at the conclusion of negotiations and when the Commission presents an Agreement to Council can an agreement be determined definitely as being 'EU-only' or ‘mixed’.  The ratification process regarding individual trade agreements must be taken on a case-by-case basis depending on the issues comprehended in the final agreement.  Where appropriate, my Department seeks legal advice on the appropriate ratification process to follow in each case.

Mixed agreements enter into force only once each individual EU Member State has approved it in line with its own national procedures.  As this process may take several years, the Council can decide to provisionally apply an agreement ('provisional application').  Provisional Application generally applies to those parts of the agreement over which the EU has exclusive competence.  Provisional Application requires the agreement by Council and ratification by the European Parliament.

For any EU/Mercosur Free Trade Agreement, I am not in a position to be definitive about the ratification process that will apply, nor any timeframes, until any Agreement is finalised and its scope and terms have been examined.