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Mercosur trade deal to be provisionally applied, von der Leyen says

The move is likely to prove controversial among anti-Mercosur sectors and EU countries critical of the deal

Feb 27, 2026 – Mar 2, 2026

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Friday that the EU–Mercosur trade agreement will be provisionally applied before full ratification – a measure already backed by EU countries last month.

“I’ve said before: when they are ready, we are ready … Over the last weeks, I’ve discussed this intensively with member states and MEPs,” she said, adding that the Commission would proceed with provisional application.

Under EU law, the trade deal can enter into force provisionally – meaning tariffs would be scrapped on most goods on both sides – two months after a Mercosur state ratifies the deal internally and notifies Brussels. The Commission, for its part, must also notify Mercosur states that it will provisionally implement the agreement.

This is now possible after Uruguay and Argentina on Thursday became the first countries to fully ratify the deal, confirming they would formally request provisional application from the EU executive.

The move is likely to prove controversial among anti-Mercosur sectors – notably farmers – as well as in countries including France and Poland, which voted against the deal.

In a last-ditch attempt to prevent the provisional application, Paris and other capitals tried to block it through a declaration that would have forced Brussels to wait for the European Parliament’s consent. But Cyprus, as the current holder of the rotating EU Council presidency, eventually abandoned the text after consultations with diplomats, as Euractiv first reported.

Emails obtained by Euractiv show that the Commission’s trade directorate-general did not intend to make provisional application possible before full ratification by the European Parliament and had described the inclusion of such a provision as “unintended”.

Full ratification by the European Parliament will have to wait until the EU’s top court rules on the legality of the agreement, after MEPs challenged it last month.
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