AGERPRES special correspondent Florin Stefan, reports: PNL MEP Siegfried Muresan stressed, on Monday in Strasbourg, the importance of the European Parliament (EP)'s vote to approve the support measures for European farmers, represented by the safeguard clauses within the EU-Mercosur agreement. After this vote, scheduled for Tuesday, the decision on provisional application will be up to the European Commission (EC).

'The clauses are extremely firm, because practically at minimum variations in quantity of only 5% or minimum variations in prices of only 5%, the European Commission can trigger a mechanism to protect farmers,' Muresan declared in a briefing for Romanian journalists.

He explained that initially the proposed margin of these variations was 10%, but the European Parliament insisted on this proportion of 5%. 'These measures come together with 45 billion euros offered to farmers in the context of this free trade agreement,' added Muresan, who is vice-chair of the European People's Party (EPP) group in the EP.

The MEP said he was convinced that these safeguard clauses would be adopted this week with a large majority and said the vote was essential to protect Romanian farmers and those of other EU member states, in the context of the entry into force of the free trade agreement with Mercosur, a bloc of Latin American countries.

Siegfried Muresan reiterated that this EU agreement with Mercosur 'deserves to enter into force', recalling that PNL MEPs voted in corpore last week against referring the agreement to the EU Court of Justice, which could block the full implementation of the agreement for up to two years.

'Those who voted to refer this agreement to the European Union Court of Justice did not help farmers at all, they did not solve anything. Those who wanted to help farmers campaigned and worked to strengthen these safeguard clauses in recent months, and the request of some political parties in Romania to have more debate on this agreement could have been considered in good faith if the party requesting this had not been in government for 20 out of 27 years during the negotiation of the agreement with Mercosur,' said Muresan, a transparent reference to the fact that almost all PSD MEPs voted at the January session in favor of referring the agreement to the Court.

Asked whether a decision by the CJEU on the EU-Mercosur agreement to issue recommendations on its amendment could also affect the safeguard clauses that will be voted on Tuesday, the PNL MEP refused to speculate.

'We cannot speculate on what the Court will say. We do not know how the Court will work and we cannot put pressure on the judiciary. It is not our right and role as parliamentarians. The majority of the European Parliament decided to refer the agreement to the Court. We understand this, we are waiting, the court works according to its own customs, at its own pace. We can only wait now,' he said.

Muresan also stated that, if the EC provisionally implements the agreement with the Mercosur states, the EPP group, of which he is a member, is considering creating a parliamentary committee aimed at monitoring the implementation of this agreement 'precisely to ensure that monitoring and control are carried out extremely strictly and to create a transparent platform in the European Parliament, in which authorities at the national level, at the European level, together with farmers' representatives, can debate the implementation, can monitor it, so that we can ensure that, in case of need, the European Commission acts quickly and to protect farmers'. AGERPRES (RO - editing by: Mariana Ionescu; EN - writing by: Bogdan Gabaroi)