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As it faces up to fresh challenges, the EU must build on past successes, writes Martin Wolf — and remember that neither economic integration nor convergence among member states was inevitable.
Preferential treatment
EU lawmakers yesterday approved a one-year delay to its ban on some imports from deforested areas. But with many developing countries still seething about the new rules, could it induce them to sign trade deals with Brussels? ask Andy Bounds and Alice Hancock.
Context: The deforestation law states that countries will be classified as low, medium or high risk for destroying forests. This will dictate how intensely EU authorities will check products such as timber, leather and coffee to see if they should be potentially banned for import.
The Mercosur trade deal provisionally concluded this month will give its four members — Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay — “slightly better treatment” under the new rules, according to a senior EU official.
If the law causes a “collapse of exports . . . in particular sectors”, Mercosur countries can ask for compensation or raise barriers to EU imports if an adjudication panel agrees, the official said. Brussels must also take into account the countries’ own certification systems for deforestation when assessing which risk category to put them in.
Jessika Roswall, the new EU environment commissioner, told the FT that the Mercosur trade deal “will probably benefit” those four countries, since they have made commitments to sustainable development.
“It will matter for the risk classification,” she said.
This could encourage other countries which have qualms about the deforestation law, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, to conclude their own trade deals with the EU, held up partly by concerns over Brussels’ environmental demands.
“I hope so, of course,” Roswall said.
What to watch today
Leaders from the EU and the western Balkans meet in Brussels.
Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte hosts Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and leaders from the EU, France, Germany, Poland and the UK.
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Publish date : 2024-12-17 22:02:00
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