Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 5 • Number 13 • 8th July 2005

EU Adopts Scheme to Reward Convention Adopters

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EU Member states on 23 June agreed to a new system of trade preferences to grant developing countries’ products enhanced access to the European market. The new system, which is based on a European Commission proposal of 20 October 2004 (see BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 5 November 2004), narrows the number of programmes to three from the former five. The general scheme will offer all developing countries reduced tariffs for some 7200 products, including 300 new ones in the agriculture and fisheries sector. A ‘GSP Plus’ component will provide poorly diversified and vulnerable economies duty-free access for 7200 products, so long as they ratify and apply 23 international conventions on human rights, labour standards, environmental protection and governance principles. For a country to be eligible for the GSP Plus program, its five largest GSP-covered export products to the EU must account for over 75 percent of its total GSP-covered exports. Such exports must also account for less than one percent of EU imports under the GSP. The third component is the ‘Everything But Arms’ (EBA) initiative, adopted in 2001, which grants duty-free market access to all exports from least-developed countries (LDCs) except for arms and ammunition. While development organisation Oxfam welcomed the new scheme, they said that the benefits of the new GSP would be limited because of the EU’s failure to link them to reformed rules of origin (see BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 1 April 2005). “The new scheme will be meaningless for the 50 poorest countries in the world if the rules of origin remain rigid,” said Luis Morago, head of Oxfam’s Brussels office. The GSP plus scheme came into force on 1 July and the rest of the package will take effect on 1 January 2006.

The EU Press Release, memo and Regulation can be accessed at http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/issues/global/gsp/index_en.htm

“European Commission presents its new GSP scheme: EU trade measures could go much further, says Oxfam,” OXFAM INTERNATIONAL, 22 June 2005.