On May 1, the provisional application of the Interim Trade Agreement between the European Union and Mercosur comes into force. In this way, a treaty is put into operation that, despite having been negotiated for more than 25 years, has received and continues to receive the rejection of the community's primary sector.
The European and Spanish trade balance with Mercosur countries is, as of today, negative. That is, the EU and Spain import more goods than they export. In fact, our country is the first of the 27 in total imports and the second (behind the Netherlands) in agri-food products.
What agri-food goods does Spain import from Mercosur?
According to the report "Analysis of agri-food exports. Year 2025" by Cajamar, last year 2025 Spain imports from Mercosur to Spain exceeded 10,000 million euros, of which 4,150, 41%, belonged to the agri-food sector.
Of this amount, around half, some 2 billion euros, corresponds to raw materials intended for the production of animal feed (solid waste, beans, and corn), while the rest corresponds to products such as coffee, crustaceans, sugar, beef, fruit juices, and fruits.
With the entry into force of the Mercosur treaty and the reduction of tariffs, imports of beef, chicken, and sugar will increase. Following the continuous rejection of the treaty by European farmers and ranchers, the European Commission established a series of safeguards that will be implemented 20 days after a 5% increase in agreed import quotas or a more than 5% drop in sensitive products affected by Mercosur is detected.
What did Spain export to Mercosur?
The European Union country that exported the most last year to Mercosur was Portugal, mainly due to its ties with Brazil. Italy, the Netherlands, and, in fourth place, Spain follow.
Of the total 4,702 million euros that Spain exports to Mercosur, 8.9% (421 million euros) come from agri-food products. As reflected in the Cajamar report, the main products that Spain markets to Mercosur are olive oil, stone fruits, and wine, followed by alcohol, food preparations, edible offal, vegetable juices and extracts, and bakery and pastry products.
Despite the harsh criticism that the Mercosur Agreement has generated, the expert in agri-food exports and author of the Cajamar report, Jaime Palafox, acknowledges that "given the low level of exports from which we start, there is significant growth potential in Spanish exports. However, it will be important to see the evolution of the trade balance in the coming years".
Palafox emphasizes that the European Union is the world's leading agri-food exporter, (more than the United States or China) and that Spain is the fourth member state that sells the most to third countries, behind Germany, the Netherlands, and France.