The developments around carbon farming represent major impact on the way farmers operate across Europe, and an opportunity to define a common EU standard for the transparent identification of activities that remove carbon from the atmosphere in a sustainable way.

The EU-MERCOSUR Free Trade negotiations were launched by the end of 1995, more than 20 years ago. The stop and go pattern reached a high go point in 2004 when both the EU and the then 4 Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) got very close to concluding the deal.