Members of the European Parliament’ s Committee on International Trade (INTA) have told the EU’s Chief Trade Enforcement Officer, Denis Redonnet, that the role of EU delegations in promoting and implementing trade agreements is unclear. This topic was under discussion on Wednesday 14 April.
The Chair of the INTA committee, Bernd Lange (S&D, Germany) has demanded precise and specific answers on the role and involvement of EU delegations in the negotiation and implementation of free trade agreements.
Others questioned how to further involve the Commission’s envoys in non-Member States: “Can delegations be mobilised further to raise awareness of trade agreements?”, asked Margarida Marques (S&D, Portugal).
Their involvement is wide-ranging, according to Denis Redonnet, who gave details to MEPs about actions carried out by the delegations in various non-Member States.
Among their strengths, he emphasised the importance of delegations in identifying barriers to trade. “It is through the network of delegations that we identify market access barriers of all kinds at early stage, in order to prevent rather than correct”, he said.
He also indicated that the delegations were particularly mobilised to prepare exchanges between the different parties involved in the agreements, as well as facilitating procedures and institutional work in partner countries. They also provide support for the formation and organisation of Domestic Advisory Groups (DAGs) that bring together key players in civil society to monitor the agreements.
Finally, the delegations play a very active role in promoting agreements, according to Mr Redonnet. “They sometimes produce support material for the promotion of our instruments. We train delegation colleagues for the rollout of the Access2markets tool, for example”, he said.
However, MEPs who were present during the debate indicated that they still wanted even more precise answers about details of the missions undertaken by these delegations and the extent of their involvement. Bernd Lange and Helmut Scholz called for more information to be provided on the relationship between the delegations and the domestic advisory groups.
In response to this request, Denis Redonnet made a commitment to provide detailed data to the European Parliament on the nature of the support provided by EU delegations abroad. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)