France said Tuesday it was "not ready" to ratify a huge trade deal agreed by the European Union and four South American countries, as farmers and environmentalists step up their resistance to the accord.
The deal announced Friday by the EU and Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay is the largest ever struck by the European Union.
It covers markets that total approximately 780 million consumers representing a quarter of global GDP.
But while President Emmanuel Macron initially called it a "good" deal, government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye said France would not be rushing to ratify it before seeing all the details.
Citing the 2017 EU-Canada trade deal, which France has yet to ratify, she told the BFM news channel: "We will do the same thing with the Mercosur countries... We will look at it in detail and depending on the details we will decide.
"France is not yet ready to ratify (the deal)," she said.
The EU and Mercosur countries hailed the deal, which was 20 years in the making, as historic.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker billed it as a rousing endorsement of "rules-based trade" at a time of growing protectionism in the US, which is embroiled in a trade war with China and disputes with the EU.
But the road to ratification by all 28 EU members could be a long one given the growing public hostility to free trade deals, even in traditionally trade-friendly countries.
"There are significant obstacles," the vice-president of the Institut des Ameriques research group in Paris, Carlos Quenan, told AFP.
The note of caution sounded by France Tuesday "is the first step in a sort of battle of wills over the concrete implementation of the deal."
While the quotas are a fraction of the amounts Mercosur were seeking, France's Confederation Paysanne union warned that grass-fed French beef would face unfair competition "from animals crammed into feedlots and stuffed with GMO soy and antibiotics."
The Bruegel institute noted that "trade agreements can play an additional role of insurance policies in case of full-scale trade war and can be used as leverage on other non-trade issues."
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