AUTHORS: Eline Blot – Antoine Oger – Pierre Leturcq

The European Green Deal, followed by the Trade Policy Review, highlights the EU’s commitments to ‘greening’ the Union’s trade and trade policy, including a promise to improve the mainstreaming of social and environmental sustainability concerns in EU Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). However, despite years of promising rhetoric, EU trade is not yet making a positive contribution to sustainable development.

The ongoing review of the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) Chapter implementation monitoring, and enforcement framework provides an opportunity to address recent concerns and developments in the field of bilateral trade agreements and their environmental and social impacts.

In a joint statement, which builds on previous respective work, IEEP, IDDRI, Europe Jacques Delors, WiseEuropa, Fair Trade and ECCO put forward key recommendations to strengthen the current TSD framework by tooling relevant provisions, making the dispute settlement process more robust, and empowering civil society to take part in trade dialogues.

Read the full joint statement here.

Photo by Paul Teysen on Unsplash