Cheap steak and Corporate Courts: How will Mercosur and CETA sell out farmers and workers?

Jack Ó hAimhirgin

The Mercosur-EU deal has been signed, and just hot on the heels of CETA’s ratification in the Dáil in late 2025. These two deals have been all the talk the past few years in the south of Ireland as the ruling class licks its lips at what profits will be raked in. It is important that we demystify the severe consequences both will have on the Irish working class and small farmers, and our self-sufficiency. 

As politicians staged a late-night, 1am “lock-in” drama to ram CETA through the Dáil, they are now swinging open the doors for food produced far below the standards expected of Irish farmers.

First, we must understand what Mercosur is. About 25 years in the making, it is a deal the European Union has been eager to strike with South American giants like Argentina and Brazil, primarily to open new export markets and improve access to rare-earth minerals and other raw materials for European industrial monopolies. However, it will also mean a vast increase in imports of beef and other agricultural products. 

Yet, the core problem is not exactly the trade itself, but the terms on which it is based. 

This beef is often raised on land decimated by deforestation using hormones and pesticides banned across Ireland and Europe for their health and environmental risks. The EU Council has declared that the access to cheapened imports supersedes its own fragile safety rules and livelihoods of small farmers This will, in turn, artificially lower the price floor for agricultural goods and intensify competition to a destructive degree for European farmers, whereby market forces will either intensify exploitation, through forcing working longer hours or the cutting of corners. 

What this is building is a tiered process. One set of costly and restrictive rules for farmers in the EU and another, lower standard of compliance for corporate agribusiness abroad. The worst thing about this is, with the limp attempt from the 26 county government to reject Mercosur, FF and FG knew all too well that when a mixed vote comes in from all EU members, a “supermajority of 65% of the EU population” would bring the agreement through. If the bloodthirsty developments of preparing for war were not enough for working people in Ireland to see the true character of the EU, then this alone should demonstrate whose interests the bloc represents.

This agreement goes hand in hand with another recent free trade agreement, CETA. More about services and investment than food alone, Canada and the EU wish to make it easier to bank or begin telecom services in either territory. It removes almost all tariffs on goods between Canada and the EU.

The agreement also provides a legal blueprint that will protect monopolies in their pursuits of profitmaking at the expense of the working class. CETA established corporate courts (called the Investor Court System) purpose-built to allow investors to sue individual governments for policies that hurt their profits in any way. CETA aggressively promotes the privitisation of public services through claiming “market access” and “national treatment” to these multi-national corporations. Both of these agreements represent attacks on the conditions of the working class and small farmers. The increased market pressures and greater legal frameworks for agribusiness monopolies to exert their influence could be devastating for those farmers that are already struggling to maintain their incomes.

Ireland has become increasingly reliant on global supply chains. When capitalist crises hit once more- be it pandemics, war, or climate destruction, this reliance will only hurt working people even more, leading to price gouging and the artificial imposition of scarcity of resources. In other words, Ireland’s resources could not be further out of working class control.

Amidst this, the agreement is now accelerating how capital is centralised in this imperialist bloc. While explicitly prioritising the interests of export and industrial monopolies over small farmers, the agreement is also providing exclusive benefits which only large farmers could realistically leverage. For instance, the deal claims to “protect” up to 344 “geographical indications” such as regional cheese or dairy production, but it simultaneously is granting expansive market access for South American commodity giants to saturate the market with this very produce. Quotas for beef and poultry, at 99,000t and 180,000t respectively, are to be primarily filled by vast agribusinesses that no European family farms can match. 

With an influx of cheap commodities, the EU intends to exert a powerful downward pressure on market prices which will act in a role to whip the external competition. In other words, this will mean small EU farmers could be facing a squeeze out of the market en masse, all while Mercosur exporters are allowed free reign to consolidate their dominance.

The EU has long-prepared the ground for this outcome through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which systematically favours the larger holder to begin with. The sector is politically symbolic and increasingly subordinated to monopoly capital. It is no surprise that, in the advent of the 26 counties and 6 counties joining the EU from 1973, that the agricultural sectors’ capital became increasingly concentrated. In the past 3 decades, small farms with less than 30 hectares have fallen by 37%, while farms overall have had a  21% decline- a loss of ~35,000 farms. On the other hand, three monopolies within dairy (Glanbia, Kerry Group, and Dairygold), and three main beef processors (Kepak, Dawn Meats, ABP Food Group) control ~30% and ~70% of their sectors respectively. Developed with the support of the ruling class of Ireland, the CAP was geared to act as a gateway for an export-dependent agri sector playing to the tune of monopoly capital. 

Capitalism in Ireland is not failing, according to its main beneficiaries, it is operating exactly as it should be in its imperialist phase. This was a key, yet protracted move, by Irish monopolies to mature into a considerable international player in global markets, as Ireland north and south, reckons with newfound plans to exploit workers, domestically and beyond.

The EU even knows all too well how this will dislodge small farmers. The imperialist bloc has “promised” a €6.3bn fund to counter impacts on farmers, an admission that this destabilisation will benefit the more competitive and capital intensive agribusinesses that can best navigate such schemes.

Farmers and agricultural workers convened in Athlone, Westmeath last weekend (Saturday 10th January 2026) following what can only be seen as a failure in intervention, with the government deciding to vote against the Mercosur deal, but only at the very last minute. However, small farmers have seen through the government’s shallow attempt to mask their support for the deal. The protest contained many sections of the agricultural industry with a range of motivations, but those that will be most acutely affected will be the small farmers. Much of the framing surrounding the protest, well attended by tens of thousands, focused around “foreign” power, however we know truly that the primary exploiters are in monopoly agribusinesses. This view is exposed when posited by the same TDs and MEPs who represent the interests of monopolies in all other aspects of government.

The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), presenting itself as the “unified, independent, and impartial voice” for all Irish farmers, has countless times exposed itself as the representative body of large farmers and monopoly agribusiness only. To manage intra-class contradictions- that is, to posture equal representation across farmers in an entirely class-divided sector, shows just how much of a dead end organisations like the IFA are for agricultural workers and small farmers. They channel their rightful anger and discontent into lobbying or backing bourgeois parties, while offering no solutions to the pressure of intensifying conditions within the sector. The IFA only serves to stabilise the capitalist organisation of Irish agriculture, all while policies are brought in to undermine the very workers who create produce from seeds to livestock.

Passing deals like Mercosur and CETA under our noses happens because there is no united, unmistakable resistance to be seen on a class basis. The struggles have not been linked in any meaningful way. Monopolies in supermarkets, input manufacturers, and speculative finance are dictating the conditions of farmers and what costs workers must pay for food. This red tape must be cut on who truly benefits from the productive process. 

It is then essential that we do not distance ourselves from the farmers’ struggle; their fight for fair prices and sustainable practices, and against the undercutting of their produce shares a common enemy with the struggle of the working class and youth: the capitalist class. To build a strong all-Ireland communist movement, it is questions like these that will inform a robust strategy for class unity; in a programme that demands complete withdrawal from all imperialist economic blocs, and our struggle for socialism that will guarantee the working class shall not answer to neither investor court nor capitalist monopoly.