Summary
The huge discrepancy in Citrus Black Spot interception rates between Spanish, Dutch and UK border control authorities raises questions as to the commonality of current control measures implemented by EU member states. It also raises questions as to the extent and nature of future regulatory alignment requirements once the UK leaves the EU customs union and single market. This is an important issue for ACP exporters who use triangular supply chains in delivering short shelf life, fruit, vegetables and cut flowers to the UK market. Minimising SPS controls at EU/UK borders will be critical to the future commercial viability of these routes to UK markets. Current Covid-19 flexibilities and innovations in the exercise of official controls could hold some important lessons for future EU/UK SPS border controls, particularly if the policy focus was on the practical outcomes in terms of the phytosanitary protection of domestic agricultural production, rather then the modalities for the application of controls. Read more “Variable Application of Citrus Sector Phytosanitary Import Controls Highlights Practical Challenges of Regulatory Alignment in Future UK/EU Relations”
Category: Caribbean
More Evidence Sugar Levies Work in Stimulating Product Reformulation
Summary
Daily per capita sugar consumption in soft drinks in the UK has declined by 30% between 2015 and 2018, in part in response to the Soft Drinks Industry Levy. This decline could see similar such measures introduced for other high sugar content food products. Some 73% of the decline was driven by industry reformulation efforts and 27% by changing consumer purchasing patterns. An important underlying driving force however is the trend towards healthier eating, which is largely immune to short term price falls (as induced by the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic). This will accelerate the trends towards reduced Eu sugar consumption which is already underway. If ACP sugar exporters remain focussed on the EU market, they will need to target increasingly differentiated member states sugar markets, since considerable price premiums exist on in certain national EU sugar markets (region 3 countries). Read more “More Evidence Sugar Levies Work in Stimulating Product Reformulation”
New EU MRLs Highlight the Difficulties in Securing International Consensus on SPS Issues, Despite EU’s Dominant Role in Setting Regulatory Standards
Summary
The EU continues to set and re-set pesticide and fungicide Maximum Residue Level (MRLs) at far stricter levels than internationally agreed standards. ACP exporters serving EU markets have no option but to comply or exit the EU market. Freshfel’s call for ‘better defined international standards’ to facilitate EU fruit and vegetable exports, since uneasily with the unilateral standard setting practiced by the EU, which regularly presents new compliance challenges for ACP fruit and vegetable exporters. This raises important policy issues regarding the EU’s role in the de facto setting of international standards and the limitations of SPS chapters and institutional mechanisms established under trade ACP-EU FTAs for ensuring EU markets remain open to ACP products which comply with agreed international regulatory standards. Read more “New EU MRLs Highlight the Difficulties in Securing International Consensus on SPS Issues, Despite EU’s Dominant Role in Setting Regulatory Standards”
Covid-19 Related Cancellation of Commercial Flights Beginning to Bite for ACP Horticulture Exports
Summary
The current Covid-19 disruptions of Kenyan exports to Europe, particularly along triangular supply chains to the UK, highlights the importance of shortening supply chains by wherever possible, contracting with the final retailer and shipping products directly. For exporters who can get to grip with current logistical challenges, rising EU demand for fruit and vegetables and rising prices could yield commercial benefits to counter-balance some of the Covid-19 disruptions. This is particularly the case since labour shortages in the fruit and vegetable sector as a result of disruptions to migrant labour flows could depress European fruit and vegetable production throughout 2020. Read more “Covid-19 Related Cancellation of Commercial Flights Beginning to Bite for ACP Horticulture Exports”
Covid-19 Pandemic Raises Questions Over the Brexit Effect on ACP Triangular Supply Chains
Summary
The Covid-19 pandemic is highlighting the supply chain problems which can arise when border clearance arrangements come under stress from increased demands and reduced capacities. This is bringing into question the future commercial viability of existing ACP triangular supply chains for short shelf life products in serving the UK market. This needs to be seen in the light of the border clearance challenges and associated transportation disruptions which are likely to arise as a result of the UK governments’ current approach to future trade relations once it leaves the EU customs union and single market. Current policy responses to transportation disruptions associated with border clearance problems linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, could provide a basis for longer term arrangements to facilitate the continued smooth functioning of triangular supply chains. In the absence of such initiatives ACP exporters will need to explore opportunities for direct exports to the UK or diversification away from the UK market. Read more “Covid-19 Pandemic Raises Questions Over the Brexit Effect on ACP Triangular Supply Chains”
Dairy Price Recovery Likely to be Reversed by Covid-19 Pandemic
Summary
Covid-19 pandemic related disruptions to EU and global dairy markets has led the European Milk Board (EMB) to call for the implementation of a production restricting Market Responsibility Programme, which it is argued should become a permanent feature of the EU diary sector policy tool kit. While the EC is likely to resist such call, favouring traditional intervention buying, ACP milk producers could usefully support the EMB proposal in order to avert future ‘dumping’ of low priced EU milk powder on ACP markets, to the detriment of local milk producers and national efforts to boost local milk production. Read more “Dairy Price Recovery Likely to be Reversed by Covid-19 Pandemic”
Absence of Clear Region of Origin Labelling of Poultry Suggests a Need for Pre-emptive Import Restrictions as Spread of Highly Contagious AI Spreads Across Europe
Summary
The spread of highly contagious avian influenza (AI) across Europe in the absence of clear place of origin labelling of the birds from which poultry meat exports are derived, would suggest a need for the pre-emptive introduction of import restrictions where domestic ACP poultry production could be vulnerable to infection. If the EU wants to keep export markets open in the face of periodic outbreaks of high contagious AI within Europe, then mandatory labelling of the place of origin of the birds from which poultry meat exports are derived would appear to be essential. Read more “Absence of Clear Region of Origin Labelling of Poultry Suggests a Need for Pre-emptive Import Restrictions as Spread of Highly Contagious AI Spreads Across Europe”
The Link Between EU Agri Food Sector Protectionism and the Value of ACP Trade Preferences Highlighted
Summary
The WTO has once again highlighted the EU’s extensive use of tariffs and non-tariff measures to manage EU agri-food markets. Preferred ACP exporters benefit from these protectionist EU trade policies, with any movement away from these policies potentially see mainly ACP/LDC exporters losing out to the tune of €1.6 billion. The prospects of such losses are very real with regard to the UK market, where there is strong pressure under the current MFN tariff review to abandon MFN tariffs where the UK has no or only limited production interests to protect. Looking forward, within the EU, a long standing insistence on abolishing quantitative restrictions on imports from the EU under economic partnership agreements concluded with ACP countries, is being given new impetus with the creation a Chief Trade Enforcement Office, dedicated to making sure existing trade agreement commitments by 3rd countries are fully implemented. Such a course of action however sits uneasily with the EU’s own extensive use of quantitative restrictions in sensitive agri-food sectors. Read more “The Link Between EU Agri Food Sector Protectionism and the Value of ACP Trade Preferences Highlighted”
EU Rice Consumption to Rise Slightly, But What Future Role ACP Suppliers?
Summary
Despite the strong growth in EU rice consumption and imports in recent years, ACP rice exporters have not benefited from this trend, with EU rice import growth being accounted for by imports from Myanmar and Cambodia, both of which are LDCs. With EU rice consumption and imports stabilizing, the only prospect for increased EU imports of rice from Guyana and Suriname would appear to lie with an extension of existing human rights related sanctions, which have seen certain EBA tariff preferences withdrawn from Cambodia. This would require such measures to be extended both in terms of product scope and geographical coverage to encompass both rice and Myanmar respectively. The EU currently has no plans to take any such action at the moment, with the response of the Government and Cambodia and Myanmar to ongoing enhanced dialogues on human rights being critical to the future evolution of the EU’s trade and human rights policy. Read more “EU Rice Consumption to Rise Slightly, But What Future Role ACP Suppliers?”
Will St Lucia Continue to Have an Export Trade Relationship with the UK once the UK Leaves the EU Customs and Single Market?
Summary
With the UK’s current MFN tariff review posing the question: should the UK government remove all tariffs where the UK has ‘zero or limited production interest’, the St Lucian banana sector could lose significant margins of tariff preferences which could prove to be the final nail in the coffin of St Lucia’s banana exports to Europe. The UK is the only EU market served by St Lucian banana exports with bananas accounting for fully 83% of total exports to the UK. This could see only a marginal residual export trade relationship remaining from 2021. With the UK market taking more in exports from St. Lucia than all the other EU27 market combined, this would also profoundly undermine St Lucia’s export trade relationship with the EU. Given the basis the banana trade provides for ongoing efforts at agricultural export diversification, retaining in place existing UK MFN tariffs is essential to St Lucia’s continued trade relationship with the UK Read more “Will St Lucia Continue to Have an Export Trade Relationship with the UK once the UK Leaves the EU Customs and Single Market?”