2454 final report.pdf - Agra CEAS Consulting

Evaluation of the Community Plant Health Regime: Final Report
DG SANCO Evaluation Framework Contract Lot 3 (Food Chain)
Source: FAO 265
4.2.2 Bilateral and international relations with third countries 266
EQ 26 What economic impacts do any differences in standards between EU producers
and key international trading partners have on Community trade, and is there a need that
EU societal concerns and legitimate factors would be better reflected in the
implementation of international and bilateral rules?
At the international level, plant health regimes are being seen as supporting tools to trade. The
more pests are regulated, the higher the costs, but exports are facilitated by establishing trust
vis-à-vis trading partners.
Bilateral agreements are in place with key trading partners e.g. US, Canada, NZ, Switzerland,
and the European Economic Area, but these for the moment include mainly SPS issues in
relation to trade in live animals and animal products and to food safety. Phytosanitary issues
are not yet covered by these agreements. Only the agreements with Switzerland, Mexico and
Chile include a phytosanitary chapter. Discussions for the inclusion of a phytosanitary chapter
are currently ongoing with Andean Community and South America, ASEAN countries, and at
bilateral level with Korea, India, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus and with Canada in the context of
a CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) phytosanitary issues will be
discussed.
The bi-regional negotiations are much more difficult to conduct and slow-going, as the
regions involved are often a political rather than economic region and may therefore have
very different interests, concerns and approaches. It is also obvious that an unbalanced
situation will be created when at one side the region is SPS wise highly integrated and the
other region is not or hardly integrated in the SPS field. In such situation one party has access
to one single market and the other party has only access to several fragmented markets.
With Russia a partnership and cooperation agreement (PCA) is in place. Negotiations are
ongoing on a Deep and Comprehensive Agreement which includes a cooperation part and
should also include in the future a FTA (including SPS), the latter being depending on the
progress of the negotiations in the context of Russia‘s potential WTO accession . A series of
memoranda of understanding (MoU) are currently in place to deal with EU exports of
animals, plants and products including food products. One of the MoU's deals with transit
through the EU, which is a key concern for Russia. One MoU signed in 2005 covers
phytosanitary certification.
265
FAO (2007) Independent Evaluation of the Workings of the International Plant Protection Convention and its
Institutional Arrangements
266 The distribution of responsibilities between Commission services in terms of bilateral and international
agreements on SPS issues was outlined in section 2.4.
Food Chain Evaluation Consortium 299