Welcome to Better Europe’s weekly update on EU Affairs.
THE POLITICAL MEETING THAT WASN’T
Brussels observers described it as a ‘political meeting’ of EU agriculture ministers on EU food security and sovereignty, but nobody bought it. Behind the talk of farm budgets and ‘listening to rural voices’, the real topic was the deadlocked EU-Mercosur trade agreement and whether the Commission could secure its approval before a key Coreper meeting on Friday. So, the Commission sent its best negotiators to the meeting: Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič and Agriculture Commissioner Christos Stylianides, who were armed with promises of ‘safeguards’ and ‘flexibility’. The party poopers? France and Poland, who warned that the deal could open the door to unfair competition and weaken Europe’s farming standards. Meanwhile, Italy is drifting towards a yes after the decision to take fertilisers out of the CBAM border tax. Outside the Council building, farmers were back in the streets in light-touch mode, blocking a few roads and giving away free fries on Place Lux, with the same message: these will be the last European fries if you sign away our livelihoods and call it a strategy.
SANTA’S SECURITISED SURPRISES
Faster than expected, Member States found an agreement on the revival of securitisation in the last days before the holidays — a Christmas present from the Council as the main industry association put it. With Christmas gifts, the thing is, you usually do not exactly know what is in there. And it was exactly this kind of packaging of investments and selling them off to ignorant investors that accelerated the global financial crisis and burnt the image of the risk sharing technique. While the Council has mostly focused on changing technical parameters such as using the technique in retail UCITS products and discloures, the Parliament will likely have a more political discussion at a key meeting next week. MEPs will debate the capital treatment and the level playing field between traditional and synthetic securitisations, which essentially will determine how much the screws will be loosened. What is sure, is that political negotiations will take most of this year, and that we’ll see Santa come a few more times before the relaxation of the rules is actually applied.
BRUSSELS IS BACK… SORT OF
Thanks to a quiet and snowy week, stretched by Epiphany and Orthodox Christmas, the EU bubble is slowly rebooting. Parliament is getting ready for a busy committee week and Member States are finalising their position on agriculture and trade so that Ursula von der Leyen can finally sign the EU-Mercosur trade deal after more than two decades. Beyond her travel to South America, la presidenta will also be in the Middle East with European Council President António Costa, a high-visibility tour in a region where the EU’s influence is harder to measure than its photo-ops. Later in the week, the full College of Commissioners heads to Cyprus to mark the start of the Council presidency: expect unity talk, and probably few hard signals. So yes, a slow start to 2026. Enjoy it while it lasts.