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European Union External Environmental Policy pp 59–79Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Environmental Instruments in Trade Agreements: Pushing the Limits of the Dialogue Approach

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Part of the book series: The European Union in International Affairs ((EUIA))

Abstract

The EU has spearheaded the signing of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) with multiple countries across the developing world. These agreements play an important role in the toolkit of EU external environmental governance instruments by including environmental standards requiring trading partners to maintain proper levels of environmental protection. This chapter offers a much needed assessment of the effectiveness of environmental standards in EU PTAs. It traces the evolution of the EU’s approach towards environmental provisions, focusing on their governance mechanisms, and further examines their implementation in EU PTA partners, assessing the governments’ and civil society’s involvement in this process and pointing at the deficiencies of the EU’s approach, such as their limited scope and soft enforcement.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Milner and Mansfield (2012, 5) define PTAs as “international agreements that aim to promote economic integration among member-states by improving and stabilizing the access that each member has to the other participants’ markets.” Thus, EU PTAs include various free trade agreements (FTAs), association agreements and economic partnership agreements (EPAs) all of which have a trade liberalisation goal. To date, the EU has signed 36 PTAs and is further negotiating twelve new ones. Economic partnership agreements (EPAs ) also provide reciprocal trade preferences to Asian-Caribbean-Pacific countries. Scholars distinguish among five different types of PTAs : preferential agreement; free trade area; customs unions; common market; and economic union (Milner and Mansfield 2012). Since free trade agreements (FTAs ) that eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade among their participants are a subset of PTAs , this paper will use these terms interchangeably.

  2. 2.

    Bilateral is used here to denote bilateral trade relations and excludes the EU’s inter-regional agreements.

  3. 3.

    This has been confirmed by a high-level negotiator of the EU-Chile Association Agreement discussed below.

  4. 4.

    Author’s interview, 25 June 2012, Brussels.

  5. 5.

    Ibid.

  6. 6.

    Presentation by the MEP serving on the International Trade Committee, 2 December 2014, Brussels.

  7. 7.

    The sustainable development strategy was adopted in 2001 and the global dimension was added to it in 2002.

  8. 8.

    Author’s interview, 19 June 2012, Brussels.

  9. 9.

    Author’s interview, 18 June 2012, Brussels.

  10. 10.

    Author’s interview, 19 June 2012, Brussels.

  11. 11.

    The following discussion is based on the original field research conducted by the author in the summer of 2013.

  12. 12.

    Author’s interview, 31 May 2013, Santiago.

  13. 13.

    Ibid.

  14. 14.

    Author’s interview, 5 June 2013, Santiago.

  15. 15.

    Author’s interview, 10 June, 17 June 2013, Santiago.

  16. 16.

    While it is plausible to think that Chilean producers began changing their processes for the goods produced for the EU market, this change cannot be directly attributed to the agreement which does not place any requirements for the businesses.

  17. 17.

    For example, one of the key players among the Chilean environmental NGOs is the organisation Programa Chile Sustentable consisting of a single person. Author’s interviews, June 2013, Santiago.

  18. 18.

    Author’s interview, 17 June 2013, Santiago.

  19. 19.

    Ibid.

  20. 20.

    Author’s interview, 10 June 2013, Santiago.

  21. 21.

    Author’s interview, 31 May, 5 June 2013, 10 June 2013, Santiago. The full assessment of this process would require disentangling pressures from Chile’s agreements with the US and Canada.

  22. 22.

    Some of these requirements are also country-specific, for example, trade in fish and forest products in the EU FTA with Colombia and Peru.

  23. 23.

    Canada also pursues environmental standards in its PTAs, relying on monetary assessment as a means of ensuring compliance.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Evgeny Postnikov

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  1. Evgeny Postnikov
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Camilla Adelle

  2. University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Katja Biedenkopf

  3. School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Ireland

    Diarmuid Torney

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Postnikov, E. (2018). Environmental Instruments in Trade Agreements: Pushing the Limits of the Dialogue Approach. In: Adelle, C., Biedenkopf, K., Torney, D. (eds) European Union External Environmental Policy. The European Union in International Affairs. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60931-7_4

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