On Monday 23 September, the Italian Minister for Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, unsuccessfully requested that the European Commission add rice imported from certain South-East Asian countries to the list of products covered by automatic safeguard clauses.
“During the last marketing year, 450,000 tonnes of milled rice were imported at zero duty from Cambodia and Myanmar”, the Italian minister warned during the Agriculture Council.
In a note (https://aeur.eu/f/dk7 ) supported by five other States (Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Spain), Italy takes the view that “this situation will not be sustainable in the near future due to the increase [in] EU rice production”. France supported the Italian request, while Germany and Denmark opposed it.
Cambodia and Myanmar benefit from the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP), which provides special duty-free import arrangements for so-called least developed countries.
Italy has called for the regulation, recently extended until 2027 (see EUROPE 12944/25), to be amended to include rice among the products covered by automatic safeguard clauses, which would allow this import preference to be abolished once a certain threshold (in terms of volume) is exceeded.
Italy points out that the general safeguard measure (article 22 of the GSP regulation) has already been adopted in the past, but it is not sufficient in Rome’s view (see EUROPE 13369/38).
“The Commission cannot accept automatic safeguards on rice imported from the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). To single out specific products is against the non-discriminatory nature of the GSP Regulation, where access to the EU market for vulnerable economies is open and generalised. It would also de facto create measures that target specific GSP beneficiaries”, retorted the European Commissioner for Agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski.
An automatic process (including thresholds) is not acceptable to the Commission, as it would have “considerable consequences both for trade and development”. Nevertheless, the Commissioner gave his assurance that the Commission considers rice to be a sensitive product in all trade negotiations and is therefore granting only limited concessions. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)