The Animals Will Have to Wait: How the EU–Mercosur Deal Helped Derail Animal Welfare Legislation

Abstract The EU has played a leading role in animal welfare promotion. In late 2023, however, its Commission disappointed many by not proposing expected new measures for its member states on three farming practices: slaughter, labelling and the housing of animals. What can explain this turnaround – a prime example of regulatory ‘chill’? This article focuses on one late‐stage factor: the Commission's fear of jeopardising the pending EU–Mercosur trade agreement since the new standards, given the conditionality that they apply to exporters to the EU, would have risked upsetting the South American countries with their lower standards. But such a stance merits investigation: the EU normally exports its standards through trade, whilst here a sort of reversal occurred. Moreover, the Commission's concern with the fate of a bilateral trade agreement points to an unexplored driver of regulatory ‘chill’. We wish to understand, therefore, how the Commission reached its position. Relying on process tracing, this article points to the confluence of three dynamics: institutional (competition amongst three directorates‐general, with Directorate General Trade prevailing), temporal (animal welfare as the ‘last straw’ in terms of EU demands to Mercosur) and symbolic (the Commission's public commitment to concluding trade deals). The article closes with reflections on the tensions between animal welfare and trade and between EU trade agreements and regulatory ‘chill’.