Mirror, mirror on the wall, EU reciprocity standards in agri-food as a solution for all?
- The EU has taken a more unilateral approach to developing sustainable trade measures, based on reciprocity
- In the agri-food sector these measures are increasingly presented as contributing to a level playing field for EU farmers.
- Predicting the impact of these unilateral measures, however, is difficult due to the complex and uncertain interaction with other conditions
- Better impact assessments and a more reflexive approach are needed when adopting new unilateral measures
This policy brief reflects on the use of reciprocal sustainability standards in unilateral trade measures by the EU and its impact on the agri-food sector. The contribution is positioned within the recent calls to better protect European farmers from unfair competition and imported products that face less stringent sustainability standards, but also aims to provide a general overview of the discussion about these measures and their broader impacts. With regard to this impact, the policy brief highlights the difficulty of predicting and assessing what effect these unilateral measures will have. It calls for better impact assessments and a reflexive approach when adopting new unilateral measures. Such an approach should make it possible to set unilateral reciprocal standards when needed, but would reduce or dimmish unforeseen adverse impacts.
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