The Chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade (INTA), Bernd Lange (S&D, German), initiated a debate on trade and sustainable development at the plenary session in Strasbourg on Wednesday 5 October. He asked the Commission how to apply sanctions to partner countries that do not respect the obligations of the sustainable development chapters in their trade agreement with the EU.
EU Commissioner Margarítis Schinás, who represented the Commission on Wednesday evening in Strasbourg, said that the procedure would be the same as for violations of other obligations of the agreement: a panel established by the agreement will determine violations and decide on possible sanctions.
For future agreements, has the Commission foreseen a model chapter on sustainable development (TSD)?, asked Bernd Lange. For him, it is possible to work on a case-by-case basis, but certain fundamental principles must be the same for all partners.
The Commissioner recalled that he felt it was important to take into account the specificities of the partners. “The Commission considers that there is no need to follow a single model”, he said. And went on to say: “This does not mean that we will lower the level of ambition”.
Bernd Lange did not raise the issue of the agreement with the Mercosur countries and its TSD chapters. The Commission has already told MEPs in parliamentary committee discussions that it does not intend to apply its revision of the TSD chapters to the EU-Mercosur agreement (see EUROPE 13017/20).
In the resolution on the subject, which will be put to the vote on 6 October, MEPs “hope” that the new TSD chapters will be applied “in all EU trade agreements currently under negotiation and in future trade agreements submitted to Parliament for approval, as well as in the modernisation measures of all existing free trade agreements, by means of the specific revision clauses provided for in the current agreements or other procedures”.
Parliament also calls, in the resolution, for more importance to be given to consultative advisory groups in agreements (DAGs), which should have a monitoring role on the respect of sustainable development by the parties to the agreement, according to the MEPs.
They also call for a gender chapter to be included in future free trade agreements.
During the debate, several Greens/EFA and S&D MEPs regretted the lack of sanctions for human rights violations in the Commission’s new approach on sustainable development in trade. The model proposed by the Commission focuses on violations of the Paris Agreement and the core conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO). (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)