Fabio De Masi, the national chair of the Swiss Party (BSW) and a Member of the European Parliament, dismissed criticism of the EU Parliament’s vote on the Mercosur trade agreement. He and the other four BSW MEPs had voted, together with the Greens, Left, and AfD, in favour of having the agreement examined by the European Court of Justice. “The sensationalisation of the Mercosur vote by parts of politics and the media is grotesque. It is entirely correct that an international‑law treaty negotiated over more than twenty years is being reviewed by a European court. The world does not crumble because of this” De Masi told the global press.
He added that the criticism is also out of date. “Those sleepwalkers in politics and media who have bound the EU’s fate to the United States for decades now claim that Mercosur has made the EU independent of the U.S.? Why then do we not, like Canada, engage in a strategic dialogue with China or repair Nord Stream? Moreover, even the IMF has admitted that strategic industrial policy is more sensible than classic free trade” he said.
De Masi went on to note that the debate over a joint vote by the Greens, Left, and AfD illustrates the absurdity of that parties’ ‘wall’. “If you always vote the opposite of the AfD, it completely controls how the vote is conducted. That is absurd. The BSW always makes its own decision on the issue”.
