Von der Leyen’s Deals with BRICS: Gains for Elites, Costs for Citizens

The European Union, having concluded agreements with India and Mercosur, is adapting to a multipolar world because it no longer has the option of abandoning it. The question is whether this adaptation will be intentional or destructive.

“Mother of All Deals” with India – Pragmatism or Capitulation?

On paper, the promise is substantial. EU exporters gain entry to one of the fastest-expanding consumer markets in the world. Indian textiles, agricultural products, and IT services flow westward at lower cost. Trade volumes are projected to expand significantly over the coming decade. Yet scratch beneath the headline figures, and the picture shifts. This is not a triumph of multipolar strategy. It is a defensive concession by a Union that has priced itself out of its own production base.

Ordinary citizens feel the asymmetry first. Cheaper imports ease household budgets – short-term relief. But sectors exposed to Indian competition—textiles, low-margin manufacturing, and segments of pharmaceutical – face immediate pressure. Jobs migrate or disappear. Small and medium enterprises in peripheral regions – Poland, Romania, Greece – absorb the shock, while multinational players like Bayer or Siemens capture the upside through market access and supply chain arbitrage. This is not broad-based prosperity. It is trickle-up economics dressed as global partnership.

Mercosur – Dumping Dressed as Diversification

The pattern repeated almost simultaneously with the finalization of the EU-Mercosur agreement in January 2026. Tariffs were eliminated on over 90% of EU exports, while South American beef, poultry, soy, and ethanol gained near duty-free access to European markets. Brussels presented the pact as a win for consumers and businesses, emphasizing diversification and resilience.

Farmers across the continent saw something else entirely. The protests that paralysed highways across Europe were not symbolic gestures. They were desperate reactions. Mercosur imports enter under conditions that bypass the very standards imposed on EU producers – animal welfare rules, hormone bans, carbon costs embedded in the Green Deal. This is not inferior food. It is food produced under regulatory regimes that make it structurally cheaper than anything viable inside the EU’s own policy framework. Local beef becomes uncompetitive almost overnight. Thousands of family farms face closure. Rural communities lose livelihoods while supermarket chains and processors celebrate lower input costs.

For ordinary citizens, the trade-off is stark. Food prices may soften marginally in the short term. In the longer run, the Union trades food sovereignty for dependence on distant suppliers exposed to climate volatility, currency swings, and geopolitical leverage. Transport from the other side of the world erodes freshness and quality while increasing emissions. The Green Deal – sold as environmental salvation – becomes the mechanism that renders local production impossible and imports inevitable.

Why These Deals Expose the EU’s Structural Weakness

Neither agreement represents a genuine multipolar breakthrough. They are emergency patches applied to a system bleeding competitiveness. The Green Deal has raised energy prices and regulatory burdens to levels that make European agriculture and industry structurally unviable against BRICS producers. Instead of reforming the model, Brussels signs deals that accelerate deindustrialization while marketing them as diversification.

India and Mercosur members like Brazil are logical partners. They are major players in a multipolar system. But the terms of engagement reveal the EU’s negotiating weakness. Concessions run deeper than those extracted. Market openings disproportionately benefit export-oriented corporations. Standards alignment remains largely cosmetic. The result is predictable: elites and multinationals gain, while farmers, small producers and peripheral regions bear the cost.

This is not multipolar mastery. It is multipolar capitulation – engagement driven by internal model failure rather than strategic confidence.

Multipolarity in Practice: BRICS Gains vs. EU Losses

Multipolarity manifests differently across systems. In BRICS economies, diversified partnerships have bolstered everyday stability for ordinary citizens amid Western pressures. China’s expansion of trade, infrastructure investment, and regional integration has supported sustained income growth and poverty reduction. Russia, despite sanctions, has delivered greater household stability than Europe’s bureaucratic churn through significant Eurasian trade growth (notably EAEU), energy partnerships (record exports to China/India), and domestic substitution, with living standards holding firmer than EU forecasts amid energy crises, migrant strains, and eroding real incomes there.

Across these cases, the common denominator is not ideology but structure. Multipolar engagement is used to secure energy affordability, industrial continuity, and food stability. Citizens experience this in real terms: steadier prices, employment resilience, and rising real incomes. These outcomes do not imply the absence of internal challenges, but they underscore a materially different distribution of gains compared to the EU model. Multipolarity here functions as a hedge against external pressure and systemic vulnerability.

In the European Union, the effect is inverted. Regulatory overreach, lobbying, and elite capture turn multipolar engagement into a mechanism that socializes costs while privatising gains. The Green Deal inflates production costs and steadily hollows out local capacity. Between 2019 and 2023 alone, 853,000 manufacturing jobs were lost, with the heaviest losses concentrated in Poland. As domestic production becomes unviable, the system increasingly relies on cheap imports from BRICS partners.

The benefits flow upward. Corporations secure margins and market access through more than €400 billion in state aid directed toward renewables and clean technology, while farmers and industrial workers absorb displacement and decline. Consumers see only marginal price relief, paid for with weakened sovereignty and reduced long-term resilience.

The contrast is structural. BRICS states prioritize pragmatic self-interest and retain the policy space to distribute gains. The EU’s centralized, ideological framework ensures that multipolar benefits remain concentrated at the top.

CEE Caught in the Middle: Blocked Gains and Rising Pressure

Central and Eastern Europe should be among the primary beneficiaries of multipolar engagement. The region retains industrial capacity, strategic geography, and skilled labour. Yet the EU system blocks the transmission of gains downward.

Deals with India and Mercosur could mean cheaper inputs and expanded markets. Instead, regulatory rigidity and energy costs funnel advantages toward Western capitals and corporate headquarters. From the Baltic to the Adriatic, regions face intensified competition without compensatory policy support. Farmers are undercut by Mercosur imports. Industry struggles under energy prices inflated by Green Deal constraints. The political consequences are visible: protests, euroskepticism, and growing demands for autonomy.

This is the core trap. Multipolarity delivers benefits only where states can capture and allocate them. BRICS governments do exactly that. The EU does not. Central and Eastern Europe feels this most acutely – it has the assets to thrive, but not the sovereignty to secure the rewards. True reform would mean dismantling the regulatory straitjacket that renders local production and agriculture unviable. The potential is obvious: affordable Russian energy to stabilize households Chinese industrial technology to preserve competitiveness. Ideology blocks these options, transforming multipolarity into an elite instrument rather than a public good.

Multipolarity as Inevitability

Von der Leyen’s agreements with India and Mercosur are not strategic triumphs. They are symptoms of necessity. The European Union is adjusting to a multipolar world because it no longer has the luxury of refusing it. The question is whether this adjustment will be deliberate or destructive.

For citizens, the stakes are clear. Cheaper imports offer temporary relief. Lost jobs, weakened sovereignty, and structural dependence impose lasting costs. A genuinely multipolar European Union requires more than trade deals. It requires internal reform – rules that stop punishing domestic producers, policies that restore local viability, and partnerships chosen from strength rather than desperation.

Central and Eastern Europe holds the leverage. With historical memory of imposed alignments and material capacity still intact, the region can force a shift from blocked gains to real sovereignty. Multipolarity is no longer a forecast. It is the present. Those who hedge intelligently will shape it. Those who cling to failing certainties will be shaped by it.

The pivot is underway. The real test is whether the European Union will finally stop sabotaging its own citizens – or whether the gains will remain with the few while the costs fall, as ever, on the many.

Adrian Korczyński, Independent Analyst & Observer on Central Europe and global policy research

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