Summary
The EU has been challenged in the WTO on the use of its hazard-based approach to regulating pesticides, which it is claimed can constitute a non-tariff barrier to trade. The ACP Group has endorsed the US led challenge, which includes a request for the EU to review its current approach. The EU meanwhile has asserted its unwillingness to compromise the protection of human health. However the real issue relates to the design and application of EU pesticide residue controls and other import control requirement on agricultural products. It is in regard to design and application of EU import controls where more effective dialogues are required to ensure that while protecting human health no unnecessary barriers are created. While there is general agreement on this in principle the key area of contention is how to operationalise this approach in practice. At the ACP level there would appear to be a need for: greater pan-ACP cooperation in such policy dialogues with the EU; closer coordination between producer organisation, competent authorities and diplomatic representatives in Brussels; and enhanced coordination between ACP representatives in Brussels and Geneva in international fora and bilateral discussions with the EU.
According to reports carried by Reuters the US and 15 other governments have launched an initiative at the WTO criticizing the EU’s ‘hazard-base” approach to regulating pesticides’, claiming it was inhibiting agricultural trade to the EU market from across the world (1).
In a submission to the WTO Council for Trade in Goods dated 4th July 2019, the US and 14 other countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the United States and Uruguay) called on the EU to ‘re-evaluate its approach to product approvals’ and to ‘use internationally accepted methods of setting tolerance levels for potentially harmful ingredients’. The call was made for a halt to an approach to approvals which ‘unnecessarily and inappropriately’ restricts trade (2).
It was argued that across the globe it was essential farmers should be able to make use of the ‘full range of safe tools and technologies’ in order to meet the global challenge of sustainable food production and global food security.
It was held this was being undermined by ‘regulatory barriers that are not founded on internationally agreed risk analysis principles and do not take into account alternative approaches to meeting regulatory objectives’.
The submission maintained ‘The EU’s implementation of these measures is already impacting global agricultural production and trade in key products’. What is more it was argued ‘this disruption threatens to escalate significantly in the coming years if the EU does not change its current approach’ (2).
The US led submission argued the EU effectively bans ‘some substances that other WTO members regarded as safe’. It was suggested the EU appears to be ‘unilaterally attempting to impose its own domestic regulatory approach onto its trading partners’.
An apparent reluctance on the part of the EU to discuss and explain the level of protection it was trying to attain and the risks it was trying to mitigate through specific measures was also highlighted. It was maintained comments on draft EU regulations submitted by third parties were largely being ignored. More specifically it was maintained the EU has ‘ignored requests to complete science-based risk assessments before the implementation of measures’.
The submission requested the EU to:
- re-evaluate its hazard-based approach to the approval and renewal of plant protection product authorizations;
- to confirm that import tolerances will continue to be established on the basis of internationally accepted approaches for risk assessment;
- to cease to implement those measures that unnecessarily and inappropriately restrict international trade;
- ‘establish a transparent, predictable and commercially viable import tolerance process for plant protection products which have not been re-approved’ (3).
The WTO Secretariat reported fully 31 WTO members supported the broad thrust of the submission made on the EU’s implementation of non-tariff barriers on agricultural products at the Council for Trade in Goods (3). ‘Bananas, wheat, coffee, papaya, grapes, tree nuts, coconut, sweet potatoes, mangoes and palm oil were among the products members said are being affected by the EU’s lowering of pesticide residue tolerances and divergence from science-based standards’ (3).
Concerns were expressed that the EU was providing insufficient transition periods for producers to be able to adopt their farming practices to the new regulatory requirements. According to US officials this is having ‘severe impacts’ on agricultural production and trade, with producers in sub-Saharan Africa, South and Central America facing ‘disproportionate harm’ (3).
In a statement the ACP Group said ‘the EU’s arbitrary adoption of measures negatively affects developing and least-developed countries and goes against the principle of facilitating development through trade’ (3).
The EU for its part responded that ‘the list of hazards for which it requires zero exposure is limited and that risks posed by any such exposure would be unacceptable’. The EU further asserts ‘requests for import tolerances would be handled through a process which includes a full risk assessment’, but that while recognising the concerns of WTO members ‘the EU’s level of health protection cannot be compromised’ (3).
| Comment and Analysis
The EU insistence that ‘the EU’s level of health protection cannot be compromised’ rather misses the point. The main issue relates to how human health is protected and the processes by which pesticides receive continued approval for use. This needs to be seen in the context of the expensive nature of approval processes and the absence of any commercial interest on the part of companies to incur such expense when the product is or will shortly be out of patent and the company is seeking to promote a new product over which it retains exclusive production rights. These commercial considerations as much as the underlying science of food safety can be a critical factor in whether any given product retains approval for use on food stiffs destined for consumption in the EU. There are thus dimensions to the EU policy making process which reach beyond pure science. Indeed the issue of the design and application of EU import requirements for agricultural products reaches beyond the issue of pesticide residues and needs to be seen against the background of the phasing in of the EU’s new Plant Health Regulation. The requirements set out under various implementing acts linked to the EU’s new Plant Health regulatory regime pose serious challenges to ACP exports across a range of products from mangoes and citrus fruit to bananas, aubergines and other Leafy Vegetables (see for example companion epamonitoring.net articles: ‘New EU Fruit Fly Rules Cause Concern Amongst West African Mango Exporters’, 5 August 2019; ‘Ghanaian Pre-emptive Export Ban on Chilli Peppers, Aubergines and other Leafy Vegetables May Be Just the Beginning’, 8 July 2019; ‘COLEACP Warning Highlights New EU Requirements for Retaining Access to EU Market for Chilli and Pepper Exports’, 4 July 2019). There can be little doubt that the over rigorous application of these types of EU regulations can prove not only disruptive of trade but, through their cost increasing effects, can serve to drive smaller scale producers out of high value export supply chains, since they are simply unable to keep up with the administrative workload required to verify compliance with EU regulatory requirements. This can then undermine efforts to use trade to further key SDG objectives such as the elimination of poverty. The current discussions in the WTO also need to be seen against the background of the continued production in the EU for export to third countries of the very pesticide products which give rise to residues which generate interceptions of ACP agricultural exports to the EU and even in future, under pending EU regulations market closures (see companion epamonitoring.net article ‘EU Needs to Tackle Pesticide Residues at Source by Banning Their Production in the EU’, 14th October 2019). There would therefore appear to be a need for improved structures of dialogue around the design and application of EU pesticide and related food safety and SPS import control measures. While structures exist within the various ACP-EU EPAs the political weight of the ACP parties to these various agreements is such that they have little scope for defining the parameters for these SPS dialogues. Against this background there would appear to be a need for: · far greater pan-ACP cooperation in pesticide, SPS and general food safety policy dialogues with the EU ; · closer coordination between national bodies and producer associations and diplomatic representatives in Brussels on the policy aspects of EU controls which pose the greatest challenge for ACP producers and exporters · far closer cooperation between ACP representatives in Brussels and Geneva to ensure a coordinated approach in international fora and bilateral discussions with the EU; · the establishment of issue specific information and policy discussion networks across ACP countries to jointly agree technical dossiers and advocacy strategies on specific issues of concern (e.g. stricter EU SPS import controls on Tephritidae (fruit flies) infestation or minimum residue levels for certain essential chemicals used in the preservation of bananas). |
Sources:
(1) Reuters, ‘US and 15 others slam EU regulation of farm products at WTO’, 4 July 2019
https://www.euronews.com/2019/07/04/us-and-15-others-slam-eu-regulation-of-farm-products-at-wto
(2) WTO, ‘European Union – Implementation of Non-Tariff Barriers on Agricultural Products’, 4 July 2019
file:///C:/Users/GDC%20Partners/Downloads/W767.pdf
(3) WTO, ‘EU regulation of pesticide levels’, 10th July
https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news19_e/good_10jul19_e.htm