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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
The Court of Justice of the European Union has rejected a request from Poland to suspend the implementation of the EU’s recently launched free trade agreement with the Mercosur bloc of South American countries.
The CJEU found that the Polish government had failed to prove its claims that the trade deal would cause serious harm to European farmers, consumers or the environment.
#ECJ: Order in Case C-460/26 R Poland v Council: should the implementation of the Council’s decision authorising the provisional application of the EU-Mercosur interim trade agreement be suspended pending the Court’s ruling?#CJEU #Mercosur pic.twitter.com/ocb4I4PsE8
— EU Court of Justice (@EUCourtPress) September 29, 2026
Poland has long been critical of the agreement, in particular over the potential negative impact that imports of agricultural products from Mercosur, which includes Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, could have on Polish farmers, who have repeatedly protested against the deal.
In January, Poland failed in a bid to block the agreement at the European Council, where 21 of the EU’s 27 member states voted in favour of the deal.
Although the agreement has not yet received final ratification – still requiring approval from the European Parliament and national parliaments – it nevertheless went into provisional force on 1 May. Shortly afterwards, Poland submitted a complaint to the CJEU, calling for implementation of the agreement to be suspended.
It argued, first of all, that the process through which the deal had been provisionally implemented violated the EU’s treaties.
Second, it claimed that liberalising trade in agricultural products without imposing the same production standards in both the EU and Mercosur created a risk of harm to human and animal health, the environment, the income of farmers, and the functioning of the market in the EU.
Poland has filed a complaint to the European Court of Justice against the EU's free-trade deal with the South American Mercosur bloc that recently went into provisional force.
It wants the agreement to be suspended until the court issues a ruling https://t.co/wE7DIbDazU
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 11, 2026
However, on Tuesday, the CJEU announced that it had dismissed the application to suspend the agreement, finding that “Poland has not provided any concrete evidence to establish the likelihood and imminence of serious and irreparable damage”.
The court pointed out that agricultural products from Mercosur could already be imported to the EU before the free-trade deal, and that they were and continue to be subject to food safety and health regulations similar to those for products manufactured in the EU.
It also noted that the new trade deal includes tools allowing the EU to bar products that do not meet standards, including emergency measures in the case of a serious threat to human, animal or plant life.
Finally, the CJEU said that Poland’s “general and abstract claims” regarding potential harm to farmers and markets did not include “any evidence capable of establishing, with a sufficient degree of probability, that the implementation [of the agreement]…will cause disruption”.
In response to the court’s decision, the Polish government’s spokesman, Adam Szłapka, immediately blamed the former national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) administration, which was in power in Poland from 2015 to 2023.
Szłapka said that the details of the Mercosur deal had been agreed during that period and that PiS had “failed to secure Polish interests in any way”. He argued that it was the current government which secured the addition of last-minute safeguards intended to protect farmers.
The spokesman also noted that Polish agricultural exports to the Mercosur bloc have actually increased under the new agreement while imports from there have fallen, showing that “Polish farmers are profiting from this”.
Rząd i Premier Tusk najpierw mówili, że umowa UE-Mercosur będzie „bezpieczna dla polskich rolników”. Potem nie potrafili zbudować koalicji blokującej w Radzie Europejskiej – choć polityka europejska jest domeną rządu. Politycy KO, PSL i Lewicy nie potrafili nikogo przekonać.… https://t.co/EqOJr4sneP
— Marcin Przydacz (@marcin_przydacz) September 29, 2026
However, Marcin Przydacz, the head of the foreign policy office of President Karol Nawrocki, who is aligned with the right-wing opposition, argued that the CJEU’s decision showed the impotence of the current pro-EU government.
“The government and Prime Minister Tusk first said that the EU-Mercosur agreement would be ‘safe for Polish farmers’. Then they failed to build a blocking coalition in the European Council,” wrote Przydacz.
“In the end, under pressure from public opinion in Poland, they filed a complaint with the ECJ. [It was] so weak that they lost the request for interim relief,” he added. “Ineffective policy and ineffective government.”
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: Transparency International/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
