U.S. grains merchant Bunge and Glencore-backed Viterra have offered concessions aimed at winning EU antitrust approval for their $34 billion merger, the European Commission website showed on Friday.
A last-ditch attempt by EU governments to break a deadlock over relaxing regulations on gene-edited crops failed after countries including Poland rejected changes to the text that exempted patented seeds from the measure.
China has opened an investigation into EU pork and its by-products, a step that appears mainly aimed at Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark, after the bloc imposed anti-subsidy duties on Chinese-made electric vehicles.
Pork suppliers from South America and the U.S. could gain market share in China if Beijing restricts imports from the European Union in response to escalating trade tensions, traders and analysts said.
U.S. grains merchant Bunge BG. and Glencore-backed Viterra's plan to create a $34 billion agricultural trading giant will be decided by EU antitrust regulators by July 18, a European Commission filing showed on Monday.
Farmers drove hundreds of tractors into Brussels on Tuesday to protest against the European Union's environmental policies, but the action was shunned by mainstream farming groups who said it did not reflect their members' concerns.
Spanish and French farmers blocked roads along the border through the Pyrenees mountains on Monday ahead of European Parliament elections to protest against what they say is unfair competition from outside the European Union.
Poland has become a hotspot for protests that sprang up across Europe as farmers railed against cheap imports from the war-torn country, as well as restrictions placed on them by the EU's "Green Deal" to tackle climate change.
Today European Union trade ministers agreed to impose prohibitive tariffs on cereals, oilseeds and derived products from Russia and Belarus from July 1, a move the bloc said would halt imports of these products.