France, one of the EU's agricultural powers, has made it a priority during its recently inaugurated EU presidency to ensure that imported agricultural products follow the same standards as European agricultural products, something that Spain has been demanding for years to combat unfair competition.
“We cannot continue to accept imports into the EU market of products that do not respect the standards that we impose on our own productions. It makes no sense. One of the priorities of this French presidency will be to work so that we have reciprocity of norms,” stated Julien Denormandie, the French Minister of Agriculture, at a press conference on Tuesday.
He said there were several ways to achieve this, starting with trade policy. In this sense, he referred to the so-called rate conditionality, which consists of "conditioning preferential access to the EU market to full respect for European production standards." "It is a question of fairness in competition," he added.
He also spoke about the inclusion of 'mirror clauses' in trade agreements to condition agricultural imports and respect for production standards.
European rules on imports
"All imports from the EU must comply with the Union's food safety standards," community sources told Efe.
"However, other European standards related to production requirements do not generally apply to products manufactured abroad and sold in the Union, just as third country standards related to production do not apply to products of the EU," they added.
According to the same sources, the EU is striving to improve cooperation with third countries at the bilateral and multilateral level to increase global ambition in the establishment of sustainability standards.
"The EU's high production standards for food and agriculture are one of the factors of that European food exports are so successful," they stressed.
On the other hand, they said, the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) impose non-discrimination and proportionality. "The justification and legal feasibility of applying production-related requirements to imports should be evaluated to see how these measures can be designed to comply with WTO rules," they added.
Source: efeagro.com