Summary
In a letter to EC President Juncker European civil society bodies have come out publicly in favour of extending proposed EU regulations on UTPs to supply chains including those sourcing from beyond the EU’s borders. The ACP Group and individual ACP governments with an interest in those supply chains which are most seriously affected could usefully support this initiative, so as to have an EU regulatory framework in place which can be developed in the context of the post-Cotonou negotiations to operationalise the application of these principles along ACP-EU supply chains – from farm to fork.
On 6th March 2018 the EU Fair Trade Advocacy Office, Oxfam International and the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT) wrote a letter to EC President Jean Claude Juncker welcoming EC plans to adopt ‘a new legislative initiative to improve the functioning of the food supply chain’ and ‘tackling unfair trading practices’. The letter expressed concerns over discussions in the EC ‘about delaying or even cancelling this initiative’. The organisations reasserted the importance of legislative action on UTPs which are ‘contributing factors to precarious work, low wages and poor working conditions within supply chains which serve the European market’. The letter noted how outside the EU ‘UTPs undermine EU aid goals in vital areas such as investment in agriculture’ and are in contradiction to EU commitments on policy coherence for development and the promotion of UN Sustainable Development Goals (1).
Specifically the EU Fair Trade Advocacy Office, Oxfam International and the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions called for legislation which including the following elements:
- investigations ’ex officio’, an ‘anonymous complaints procedures and confidentiality’ since this is essential to overcoming the ‘current climate of fear existing in food supply chains’;
- coordinated enforcement to common European standards ‘to stop buyers from moving their purchasing department to low-enforcement countries;
- ‘enforcement across the full supply chain and access to redress for actors outside the EU selling to businesses inside the EU’, with the aim being to ensure ‘a level playing field for all actors in the supply chain whether they are located inside or outside the EU’;
- the establishment of ‘dissuasive sanctions’ to act as an effective ‘preventative measure against UTPs’ (1).
This is part of a ‘broad coalition consisting of AIM, CEJA, Copa and Cogeca, EFFAT, Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO), FoodDrinksEurope, and Oxfam International’ which is demanding immediate action from the EC ‘to combat unfair trading practices’ (2).
| Comments and Analysis
The current calls from the EU Fair Trade Advocacy Office, Oxfam International and EFFAT could usefully be taken up and supported by the ACP Group, given the mounting evidence of the extent of unfair trading practices along ACP-EU supply chains. These abusive practices are of particular concern along East African-EU horticulture supply chains, with smallholder producers being particularly vulnerable to abusive practices which would not be tolerated under internal EU member states codes of conduct dealing with commercial relations along agricultural supply chains. The mobilization of ACP support for the extension of EU regulatory action on eliminating UTPs to ACP supply chains would be consistent with the EC’s commitment in the context of the Post-Cotonou negotiations to initiatives which ‘strengthen the position of agricultural producers and exporters in global value chains’ (see companion article ‘The EC’s Recommendations for the Post-Cotonou Negotiations: Some Implications for ACP Agro-food Sectors’, 19 February 2018). If the ACP Group supported EU non-state actors calls for a common regulatory framework to address UTPs, the ACP Group would then be better placed to elaborate on how initiatives in this area could be effectively operationalised in the context of the new broader ACP-EU development cooperation partnership on which negotiations are scheduled to commence in August 2018. |
Source:
(1) Fair Trade Advocacy Office, Oxfam International, EFFAT, ‘European Commission legislative proposal on tackling unfair trading practices (UTPs)’, 6 March 2018
http://fairtrade-advocacy.org/images/Letter_UTP_legislative_proposal_05-03-2018.pdf
(2) Fair Trade Advocacy Office, ‘Don´t pass the hot potato: European Commission must propose now legislation against unfair trading practices’, 6 March 2018
http://www.fairtrade-advocacy.org/about-us/180-projects/power-in-supply-chains-campaign/990-don-t-pass-the-hot-potato-european-commission-must-propose-now-legislation-against-unfair-trading-practices