BRIEFING NOTE: EU trade policy for sustainable food systems

IPES-Food and ECDPM (2020) EU trade policy for sustainable food systems Francesco Rampa, Olivier

de Schutter, Sean Woolfrey, Nick Jacobs, San Bilal, Jeske van Seters and Emile Frison, joint IPES-Food and ECDPM brief, October 2020, 8 pages

The European Union (EU) has committed to supporting the global transition to more sustainable food systems. As the world’s largest food importer, the EU can use its trade policies and agreements to stimulate and incentivise more sustainable practices by its trade partners. In this brief, authors from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and ECDPM provide specific recommendations on how the EU can do so.

Building on lessons from existing initiatives, the EU should adopt sector-specific regulations and sustainability standards to promote imports of sustainable food, and restrict the import of illegally or unsustainably manufactured products. Further, real change can only be achieved if the EU makes sustainable food systems an explicit objective of its free trade agreements, negotiates relevant sustainability provisions in these agreements and monitors efficiently the impact of these provisions on food systems. At the multilateral level, the World Trade Organization and the upcoming 2021 Food Systems Summit can be good platforms for the EU to build alliances with like-minded countries to push for global trade rules that promote sustainable food systems.

The EU should explore sector-specific cooperation agreements to ensure that imports entering the EU have been legally and sustainably produced (for example, working towards zero deforestation, zero child labour, zero biodiversity loss, carbon neutrality) in line with relevant international commitments and standards, including those deriving from UN human rights treaties and ILO conventions, and adhering to the same level of sustainability requirements as EU producers. In doing so, it should draw lessons from, and build on, the cocoa sustainability standards being developed with Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, and the broader precedent of Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) under the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan. (page 3)