Aontú TD for Mayo Paul Lawless is on his way back from Strasbourg so that he can attend Dáil votes tonight. He was in Strasbourg over recent days lobbying MEPs to vote to refer the Mercosur Trade Deal to the European Court of Justice. The deal has now been referred after MEPs voted to send it to the courts by a margin of ten votes. (334 yes, 324 no).
Speaking today, Deputy Lawless said “This is a good result for us, a step in the right direction. This referral means the deal will be legally frozen to allow proper scrutiny of its environmental, competition and legal implications. I was on the phone for the last number of weeks to MEPs asking them to vote to refer the deal. Last week I decided it would be worth my while physically attending the European Parliament to meet MEPs on the corridors, in their offices and indeed outside the gates to explain to them how damaging this deal is to Irish farmers, and how unsafe Brazilian beef is for people’s health. I knew as soon as I hit the ground in Strasbourg that the ground was shifting under this deal, I heard from people who had voted for the deal and were now changing their tune, I heard from people who abstained on previous votes – these were the people I targeted in my lobbying – and a lot of them were beginning to come with us again. I’m very proud of the entire Aontú team and the work they did behind the scenes on this campaign, it’s brilliant news that we have won the vote – alright be the skin of our teeth – but we got there”.
Deputy Lawless continued: “One thing that struck me out there was that it was the opposition and farmers groups themselves that were doing the work to stop the deal. I didn’t see anyone from the government side who were working on this – nobody from the Department of Foreign Affairs, no Taoiseach or Tánaiste or anyone like that. It really opened my eyes to the fact that if the government had come out against this deal earlier, if they had instructed their own Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael MEPs to vote against it, and if they’d lobbied other countries they could have stopped it altogether, but they didn’t. They sat back and offered nothing but words, while farmers and farming groups like the IFA did the heavy lifting”.
“I’m returning to the Dáil tonight and look forward in the coming days to engaging with the government and pressuring them to get real in their opposition to Mercosur. I will be encouraging the Taoiseach, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Agriculture to travel to Brussels or Strasbourg and lobby their counterparts in other countries to work together and mount a massive opposition to the deal on every front we can. This job should not just be left to the opposition – the likes of Aontú and Ciaran Mullolly and people like. If the government want us to believe they are against this deal then they must put in the work too”, concluded ;Lawless.
