Box 8: Using the GSP discussions? There are concerns that the European Commission may be interested in reducing trade preferences granted under its Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) for those countries that use export taxes. This system, now being reviewed, gives developing countries reduced or duty-free access to the EU. The Commission has, for example, coyly called for the ‘full coherence’ of all EU trade instruments to support the raw materials strategy, including ‘the preferential access to the EU market granted unilaterally’ under the GSP.101 The German government has recently told the EU’s Trade Policy Committee that it ‘believes that the EU’s interests in terms of raw materials should also be taken into account during the upcoming GSP reform – as long as poorer and poorest developing countries are not adversely affected’.102 Business Europe has been more explicit, calling on the Commission to consider suspending preferences for a product when ‘market distorting’ policies such as export restrictions are operated by that country in that product’s value chain.103
Stephen Kiriko of the Leather Development Centre, Nairobi, inspects a piece of recently-produced leather. Photographer: Mark Curtis.
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