STRASBOURG — Even if EU countries overcome their gargantuan divisions and sign off on the Mercosur trade agreement this week, a major hurdle awaits in the European Parliament.

Defenders of the deal will need to fend off an attempt to freeze its ratification as more than 140 anti-Mercosur lawmakers seek to refer it to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) for an opinion on whether the text complies with the European Union’s founding treaties. The EU’s top court could take up to two years to issue a decision.

The holdouts have enough votes to add a motion to the agenda of the Parliament after the deal is signed. The resolution to refer the deal to the CJEU would need a simple majority of votes cast to pass.

European lawmakers voted by a wide margin earlier on Tuesday to approve additional safeguard measures to protect European farmers should local markets be destabilized by a glut of cheaper agricultural produce from Mercosur member nations (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay). Out of the 662 lawmakers attending, 431 MEPs voted in favor, 161 against and 70 abstained.

“The Parliament has shown that it is possible to move forward responsibly in trade policy without putting our farmers at risk,” Gabriel Mato, the lead lawmaker on the file, told a news conference after the vote.

Mato, a Spanish Christian Democrat, said he hoped that EU co-legislators would be able to move forward quickly at a lightning round of interinstitutional talks on Wednesday afternoon. Once there’s an agreement on the safeguard instrument, a vote on the overall deal by EU ambassadors is penciled in for Friday, three diplomats said.

Critical here will be whether the safeguards — quick action by the Commission to protect European farmers in the event of a sudden influx of beef, poultry or other food imports from Mercosur countries — are enough to overcome doubts in France and Italy. Only then would Commission President Ursula von der Leyen be able to fly to Brazil on Saturday to finally sign the long-awaited trade accord.

Germany, which leads the EU’s pro-Mercosur camp, is warning that another delay would kill the deal.

“If there is no possibility of a deal this week then it’s probably going to be dead. We see that the deal already starts unraveling,” warned one German government official, who said the call by holdouts in the Parliament to refer the file to the CJEU could “kick the can down the road.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Speaking alongside Mato at the news conference in Strasbourg, Bernd Lange, chair of the Parliament’s trade committee, said the deal would not survive another delay. “If there is not a signature on Dec. 20 this agreement is dead,” the German Social Democrat said.

Second attempt

For a cross-party group of 145 MEPs belonging to centrist political families — spanning the center-right European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats, the liberals of Renew, the Greens and The Left — the safeguards are not enough. They are doubling down on their calls for an in-depth legal review to start in January.

“We want to delay the Mercosur adoption process as long as possible,” Manon Aubry, co-chair of The Left group, told POLITCO. Aubry is one of the most vocal critics of the deal, which she said would hurt European farmers and undermine the EU’s climate and environmental standards.

The group of MEPs tried in November to refer the deal to the CJEU, but the legislature’s administration said they had to wait until the Council finalized the deal.

After a meeting with Greens MEP Saskia Bricmont, Parliament President Roberta Metsola “committed” to schedule a plenary vote on the issue as soon as the Council — the intergovernmental branch of the EU — signs off on the deal, Bricmont told her fellow Mercosur skeptics in an email seen by POLITICO.

The meeting followed criticism by MEPs who blamed Metsola personally for blocking the move. Metsola’s team has responded that she followed the advice of the Parliament’s legal service and its interpretation of the rules.

During a meeting of political group leaders last week “it was decided to wait for the final agreement, and once this arrives the request for an opinion will be added to the plenary agenda,” Juri Laas, a spokesperson for Metsola, confirmed.

If the legal review is approved the Parliament would not be able to vote on the deal itself until the CJEU has issued its opinion. This would typically take between 18 and 24 months.

That could push a final Mercosur deal back to the summer of 2027, or even 2028.

The court “may, on its own initiative, adjust the pace of the proceedings where institutional or political necessity makes a timely response especially important,” the court’s press service said.

That would at least allow time for the Commission to propose new ways to ensure reciprocity, equal climate commitments on both sides, and further ways to protect farmers, said French liberal MEP Jérémy Decerle.

“I don’t know if this will bury the agreement, but I hope in any case that it will make the Commission think,” Decerle said.

Additional reporting by Nicholas Vinocur.