Trade and international agreements are among the few reserved areas of the European Union. Only the European Commission is authorized to negotiate them, and MEPs must then decide on their ratification, without being able to propose modifications.
During the campaign for the European elections in June, political attention focused on two texts which were not voted on during the 2019-2024 mandate. The free trade agreement with Canada, CETA, rejected by French senators on March 21, was adopted by the European Parliament in 2017. As for the agreement with the South American countries that are members of Mercosur, known as the “meat for cars” agreement, it was negotiated in 2019, but has still not been submitted to the European Parliament for a vote. If some reject the text altogether, others, like Emmanuel Macron, call for the renegotiation of a ” very bad “ agreement to return it ” responsible [en matière] development, climate and biodiversity”.
Methodology
The analyzes of the votes carried out by The world relate to the position of French MEPs in Parliament since June 2019, during votes for which the ballot is public. This is not always the case: by default, votes are taken by show of hands, unless a political group or part of the MEPs demand a nominal count. The vote of each MP is then published on the European Parliament website (there have been more than 18,000 since 2019). If MPs use the wrong button when voting, they can request a correction. We took this second vote into account because it better reflects the MP’s position.
In our counts, we have grouped MEPs into six political families:
- the “radical left” corresponds to the group The Left;
- the “left” to the Socialists & Democrats group;
- environmentalists in the Verts/ALE group;
- centrists to the Renew group;
- the “right” to the PPE group;
- the “extreme right” brings together the Identity & Democracy group, as well as five MEPs who had been elected on the National Rally list but who were excluded: Nicolas Bay, Hervé Juvin, Gilbert Collard, Jérôme Rivière and Maxette Pirbakas.
For the two other deputies who changed groups, Salima Yenbou and Pascal Durand, their votes were attributed to the group to which they belonged when speaking. The MEPs’ parties are those which appear on the European Parliament website.
Free trade agreements, especially voted for by Renew
However, MEPs elected in 2019 were required to vote on several trade agreements with Vietnam (2020), New Zealand (2023), Kenya and Chile (2024). Regardless of the third countries with which the Union approaches, French elected officials hold the same line: only Renew, the group of which the Macronists are part, votes in favor of these texts.
In the other camps, French MEPs are reluctant. “We must clear up a misunderstanding: we can continue to trade without free trade agreements”castigates Emmanuel Maurel, MEP from the radical left group The Left, who says he deplores a “quasi-religious belief that commerce is good in itself.” Lydia Massard, MEP from the Verts/ALE group, adds that free trade agreements can harm indigenous populations, by favoring large groups that use agricultural land for export (like the one with Kenya, which mainly exports flowers to Europe).
The position of the Republicans “shock” particularly Marie-Pierre Védrenne, Renew MP. Their head of the list, François-Xavier Bellamy, affirms his hostility to free trade agreements. The MEP explains that “France, in reality, is very uncompetitive because the weight of the standards which are imposed on our producers is much higher than all the constraints which other world producers may be subject to”. But this position is in contrast to that of their partners in the European People’s Party (EPP, majority in Parliament) who voted for the four agreements with more than two thirds of the votes. Mr. Bellamy argues that there is “a French sensibility” which is explained “in the trade balance of France, which recorded a record deficit of more than 100 billion euros [en 2022] ».
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