EU-Mercosur trade agreement, duty-free import of eggs subject to animal welfare standards: documents and clarifications.
Dear Trade,
Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting the following.
1. Access to all documents relating to the negotiation of Section A(5)(l) of the tariff schedule (Annex 2-A: https://circabc.europa.eu/ui/group/09242...) in the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement, that is to say the section of the tariff schedule providing for the duty-free treatment of certain eggs subject to the respect of animal welfare standards.
2. Access to any document explaining how the treatment under Section A(5)(l) works.
3. Please clarify how it is possible that, according to Section A(5)(l), customs duties “shall be eliminated in 5 (five) equal annual stages, and such goods shall be duty-free on as of 1 January of year 4”. Sould they not be duty free after the 5th year?
4. Council Directive No. 1999/74/EC, mentioned in Section A(5)(l) of the tariff schedule, does NOT apply to “establishments with fewer than 350 laying hens” and “establishments rearing breeding laying hens” (Article 1 of the directive), which are instead subject to Directive 98/58/EC. Does this mean that eggs under Section A(5)(l) imported in the EU from Mercosur must meet the requirements in Directive 98/58/EC to be imported duty-free if they are produced in “establishments with fewer than 350 laying hens”?
5. Please clarify why fertilised birds’ eggs for incubation, other than poultry (HS code 04071990) have been excluded from duty-free treatment under Section A(5)(l).
6. Under Section A(5)(l), a “certificate of compliance with Council Directive No. 1999/74/EC or any equivalent animal welfare official standards” is required, with equivalence to “be verified either by official certification or by third party certification”. Please clarify: (i) what “official certification” means, how it is obtained, and which body is responsible for providing it, considering that no certification procedure is mentioned in Council Directive No. 1999/74/EC; (ii) how third party certification works in this specific instance and which requirements it must satisty to be accepted by EU authorities.
Please find below my postal address:
Via Verona 63
37011 Calmasino (VR)
Italy
Yours faithfully,
Giovanni Dall'Agnola
Dear Trade,
Please kindly note that I am awaiting a response to my request. Please let me know by when I will receive the documents and information requested.
Yours faithfully,
Giovanni Dall'Agnola
Dear Trade,
Please pass this on to the person who reviews confirmatory applications.
I am filing the following confirmatory application with regards to my access to documents request 'EU-Mercosur trade agreement, duty-free import of eggs subject to animal welfare standards: documents and clarifications.'.
Please note that I have received no reply to my request.
A full history of my request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.asktheeu.org/request/eu_merc...
Yours faithfully,
Giovanni Dall'Agnola
Dear Sir or Madam,
We hereby acknowledge the receipt of your request for access to documents
sent on 11/07/2025 and registered on 12/08/2025 under the case number
2025/4121.
We will handle your request within 15 working days as of the date of
registration. The time-limit expires on 03/09/2025. We will let you know
if we need to extend this time limit for additional 15 working days.
To find more information on how we process your personal data, please see
[1]the privacy statement.
Yours faithfully,
Directorate-General for Trade and Economic Security - Access to Documents
European Commission
References
Visible links
1. https://ec.europa.eu/info/principles-and...
Dear Mr Dall’Agnola,
We refer to your email application for public access to documents of 11
July 2025, finally registered on 12 August 2025, i.e. yesterday, under the
EASE reference number 2025/4121.
Unfortunately, your email request arrived in the junk folder of our
functional mailbox and was not processed as needed.
Your application is currently being handled now, and the reply to it
should be finalised very soon.
The time limit of 15 working days expires on 3 September 2025.
In case an extended time limit is needed, you will be informed.
For any future requests, we kindly ask you to proceed through our EASE
portal at the following link: [1]Electronic Access to Commission Documents
(EASE) - [2]https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/docume....
Like this you may much easier follow-up on your requests and the related
developments.
Please note that otherwise, if you wish to continue submitting your
applications via email, we will have to perform every time a manual
registration of the request.
Also, in order to secure a proper allocation of the individual request, we
would suggest to directly address the SG.
We apologise for the delay in handling your request and for any
inconvenience this may cause.
Kindly observe the following:
Please always mention in the ‘Subject’ line very prominently the EASE
reference number you get attributed by us, thus in this case EASE
2025/4121.
You have been addressing us recently on a number of occasions together
with DG SANTE, however without any EASE reference.
Given the high number of messages we receive and have to handle on a daily
basis, it is paramount that you, like every other applicant, make
reference to the case number attributed to you (should you not have
received an acknowledgment receipt showing such EASE case reference number
within 5 working days, you should rewrite to us, quoting directly and
redisplaying your initial message).
It is very difficult for us, and as combined with research for relevant
earlier exchanges, very time consuming, and therefore often delayed, if
you do not refer explicitly to the EASE case number, and if your messages
end up in the junk mail folder, because the web addresses of third party
websites that you are using are not regarded by our email system as
sufficiently ‘trustworth’.
Moreover, it also does not make sense to address to different DGs
together, in particular in cases like apparently here, if only one of
these is in charge of replying to your requests. Given our high workload,
it is rather likely and understandable that your communications are
disregarded in such a case, and not explicitly followed up by us, when
your cases are obviously already handled by another DG, which is in
parallel addressed in your messages, despite you nevertheless still keep
on addressing us, too.
Against this background it is by far better, if you, once having opened
your own account on the portal [3]Electronic Access to Commission
Documents (EASE) -
[4]https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/docume..., are directing
your requests centrally to the Secretariat-General, from where they are
usually very fast dispatched to the pertinent individual DGs, from which
you will receive follow-up communications per the individual cases. This
is in particular important, if you intend to run a multitude of several
different requests in parallel at the same time. We are sure, that also
you will be able to keep a better overview about your cases and their
status, if you start using the EASE portal and open your own account via
[5]Electronic Access to Commission Documents (EASE) -
[6]https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/docume....
Thank you very much in advance for your understanding.
Yours sincerely,
DG TRADE Public Access to Documents Team
References
Visible links
1. https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/docume...
2. https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/docume...
3. https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/docume...
4. https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/docume...
5. https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/docume...
6. https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/docume...
Dear Mr Dall’Agnola,
We refer to your applications for public access to documents registered on
12 August 2025 and 15 August 2025, under the EASE reference number
2025/4121 and 2025/4164.
Given the exact same scope of the two requests, we will now close case
2025/4121.
You will receive the reply to your request 2025/4164 within the time limit
of 15 working days, which expires on 8 September 2025.
In case an extended time limit is needed you will be informed.
Yours sincerely,
DG TRADE Access to Documents Team
European Commission
Directorate General for Trade
Unit R2 – Single Entry Point for implementation, Outreach and
Transparency, SMEs
CHAR
1049 Brussels
Belgium
Dear Trade,
I am still waiting for a reply -- including of the same request submitted via the official EU platform (request 2025/4164).
Yours faithfully,
Giovanni Dall'Agnola