Back
EU uses WTO to blackmail developing nations: Go for more destructive exports or continue facing EU agriculture subsidies
Brussels, 30th January 2006 - Friends of the Earth Europe today charged that the European Union Council is using the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to pressurise developing countries into slashing tariffs and other trade barriers, such as log exports bans, or face the negative impacts of continuing EU agricultural subsidies.
This position was reiterated here yesterday (Sunday) at the first EU Trade Council meeting after the WTO's 6th Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong in December 2005, after the return of EU Trade Commissioner Mandelson from trade talks in Davos.
The "non agricultural market access" negotiations, known as NAMA talks, which the EU insists on driving forward, aim to free-up trade in natural resources and manufactured goods. They have already been vigorously opposed by many developing countries.
Alexandra Wandel, world trade expert at the Friends of the Earth Europe office in Brussels, said: "The message from the EU to poor nations is now clearer then ever before: You must export more raw materials to fuel our European economy, even if it means destroying more of your pristine forests and degrading your environment - or else we keep on dumping subsidised agricultural products in your markets. This is pure blackmail."
"The European ministers in the EU Council are again missing an opportunity to transform their position on trade into a genuine sustainable development strategy," she noted. "Instead, they are continuing to support an almost exclusively corporate agenda. This will push the poor into deeper misery, worsen climate change and increase forest and biodiversity loss."
European Commission studies have found that trade liberalisation harms poor communities and the environment. Climate change and biodiversity loss would be a major result of liberalization (1). One EU study on forestry revealed that softer export rules in this sector would lead to more forestland loss and illegal logging, as well as increased soil erosion (2).
"The EU must stop forcing liberalization in the forestry, fishing and mining sectors in developing countries," Wandel demanded. "It is critical that natural resources be taken out of the trade negotiations and impact assessment measures implemented immediately'
For further information:
Alexandra Wandel, world trade expert at Friends of the Earth Europe, +49 172 748 39 53
Notes:
(1) Since 1999, the EU Commission's Directorate General for External Trade has been funding Sustainability Impact Assessments through an independent research team at the University of Manchester, UK. See IARC, Overall project final report for sector studies, 22 April 2005, p. 3
http://www.sia-trade.org/wto/FinalOverallApr05.pdf
(2) IARC, Draft Final Report for the Forest Sector Study, 22 April 2005, pp. v-viii, 22-43
http://www.sia-trade.org/wto/ForestDraftFinalReport_v1_2_270205.pdf. As a result of the study, the EU Commission has stated on the website of the Directorate General for Trade that it will not support an extra sector by sector effort to cut tariffs to zero in natural resources. However, the EU still wants tariffs and non-tariff measures in these sectors to be drastically reduced.
Friends of the Earth Europe campaigns for sustainable and fair societies and for the protection of the environment,
unites more than 30 national organisations with thousands of local groups
and is part of the world's largest grassroots environmental network, Friends of the Earth International.
