Responding to a verbal question from Alessia Maria Mosca (S&D, Italy) on the negotiations being carried out on the sidelines of the WTO for an agreement on the liberalisation of environmental goods (EGA), the Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström, told a debate at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday 22 November that she hoped that the EGA agreement would be concluded at a ministerial meeting on 3 and 4 December.
"We are in the home straight following 17 rounds of negotiations. We have taken inspiration from the impetus provided by the G20 (at the Hangzhou summit of September) (see EUROPE 11593). We have a unique opportunity to conclude at a ministerial meeting in Geneva on 3 and 4 December. If we manage to do this, we will be sending out a strong message that trade policy can help to protect the environment and fight climate change by removing tariffs from a list of ecological products", Malmström said.
"The fundamental principle of the negotiations is to remove tariffs for ecological products. On the European side, we have supported products that are critical for renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies, products promoting air and water quality, and we have taken account of the international climate agreement of Paris", the Commissioner added.
"The final agreement must be credible from an environmental point of view, adequate from a commercial point of view and balanced", she went on to say, stressing that although other countries had not taken a leaf out of the EU's book in extending the scope of the future agreement to non-tariff barriers and services, the EU has made sure that the agreement is 'live' and plans to discuss solutions to these questions in the future.
Earlier, Mosca expressed her concerns as to the very nature of the agreement, given the lack of definition of environmental goods agreed at international level. "It is possible that the EGA will betray the results of the Paris conference. We wonder how its environmental credibility can possibly fail to suffer from the inclusion of certain products which may be considered not to be of great energy efficiency", she stressed, adding that there were also questions on whether or not to include 'double-usage' goods, such as tubes which can be used for a water treatment plant or the construction of an oil pipeline. She also expressed concerns at the negative ecological impact of increased imports of bicycles from countries in which environmental standards are less stringent.
Mosca also questioned whether the offensive interests of the EU, such as lifting non-tariff barriers in partner countries or services accompanying green products, such as repairs to wind farms, had been adequately taken into account.
Echoing these concerns, Spain's Immaculada Rodriguez-Piñero Fernández (S&D) also lamented the lack of a precise definition of environmental goods, criticising the fact that the list of products covered by the EGA features fewer than 300 products and that it does not cover services or non-tariff barriers. "I wonder what kind of impact the liberalisation of duty on vacuum cleaners or fridges, as certain countries are proposing, can have on the environment. I get the impression that some people have abandoned the laudable objective that we started out with. The agreement is being whittled away to nothing. We have dropped the objective and the scope", she stressed.
"This agreement should not be a cause for controversy, as it will benefit all", said Swedish MEP Christofer Fjellner on behalf the EPP, adding that he had concerns about protectionism on the part of countries with strong automotive industries, that refuse to reduce customs tariffs on electric vehicles, or countries which want to keep customs tariffs on bicycles. "What is the best definition of an environmental product? We will never know. We need to reduce tariffs on products that are not harmful to the environment so that they replace products that are harmful to the environment", he added.
"It will not be a perfect agreement. We are doing as much as we can to ensure that it is credible on an environmental level and future-oriented. There are 44 participating countries, we need to strike a balance. We are trying to base ourselves on the final use of the products that the countries can accept. There is no internationally accepted definition of environmental goods, but we still have to say that there is a common denominator", Malmström concluded, stressing that the agreement contains a revision mechanism that will make it possible to add products to the list. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)