Uruguay · Trade & Agriculture
Key Facts
—The result: Uruguay captured 63 percent of the 2026 Mercosur rice quota to the European Union, exhausting the entire 6,667-tonne tariff-free volume allocated under the interim trade agreement that took provisional effect on May 1, according to Uruguay’s deputy foreign minister Valeria Csukasi.
—What was at stake: The 6,667-tonne 2026 allocation is the first-year portion of a 60,000-tonne five-year ramp-up of tariff-free rice access from Mercosur to the European Union, established under the interim trade agreement signed in Asunción in January 2026.
—How Uruguay won it: With no internal Mercosur agreement on how to split quotas among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, the European Union applied a first-come, first-served system from May 1, also known informally as the “law of the jungle”; Uruguay’s rice sector reached European ports first and matched certificates fastest.
