On Wednesday 13 March, the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU received the support of the Member States to resume negotiations with the European Parliament (‘trilogues’) on the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP), on the basis of the text it recently proposed. A trilogue will be held on Thursday 14 March in Strasbourg to try to reach an agreement, after more than a year of deadlock.
In the text presented to the EU27 this week, the Belgian Presidency is proposing compromises on the two contentious points of the regulation, namely the inclusion of readmissions in the obligations to be fulfilled by beneficiary countries and the safeguard measures for certain sensitive agricultural products.
On this last point, a specific - but not automatic - safeguard has been provided for ethanol imports from GSP beneficiary countries, which must not exceed a certain threshold.
In the European Parliament, but also in certain Member States, an automatic safeguard was called for on rice in particular. It should be noted that, under the GSP currently in force, a safeguard is already in place for a type of Cambodian and Burmese rice (see EUROPE 13369/38).
As for the point on readmissions, there is still no question in the Council of removing the reference altogether. On the other hand, the Belgian Presidency has suggested that stricter conditions should be attached to the possibility of withdrawing tariff preferences from countries benefiting from the ‘Everything But Arms’ arrangement when they fail to meet their obligations to readmit their nationals. This means that it will be more difficult and time-consuming for the Commission to decide to withdraw the tariff preferences in this case. With this formula, the Council hopes to convince Parliament to accept the link between GSP and readmissions. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)