The European Union can make its unilateral and bilateral measures on sustainable development better complement each other, argues the think tank Europe Jacques Delors in a policy paper on Wednesday 12 April.
The authors of the paper have carried out a comparative analysis of these two approaches which the EU uses to impose sustainability standards on its trading partners: - on the one hand, in a bilateral way with trade agreements that contain obligations for both parties in this respect; - on the other hand, unilateral measures which mainly concern imports of products into the EU (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, directive on due diligence or regulation on imported deforestation).
Europe Jacques Delors observes that the implementation of imposed standards is stronger with unilateral measures, because the consent of the partners is not necessary. Therefore, this approach is more effective in ensuring fair competition between EU-made and imported products.
However, this method lacks legitimacy, unlike trade agreements where the obligations are legitimate because they are negotiated between the two parties.
With these findings in mind, the paper makes recommendations for the EU to better combine these two methods. They argue that free trade agreements can be used in several ways to enhance the effect of unilateral measures. They can, for example, provide useful technical and financial support for partners to comply with unilateral EU measures.
Trade agreements also allow for better consideration of the specificities of third countries. The authors give a concrete example: in the case of the regulation against imported deforestation, a trade agreement could include specific actions that the partner can take in the future to curb deforestation, and these could then be taken into account in the implementation of the EU regulation on imported deforestation.
See the full analysis and recommendations of Europe Jacques Delors: https://aeur.eu/f/6a2 (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)