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| Demand 10: ASSESS THE IMPACTS OF TRADE The European Commission’s Directorate General for External Trade (DG Trade) spends 10% of its budget on Sustainability Impact Assessments which are clearly biased, writes the S2B-network: |
| Such assessments prove necessary for investigating the potential negative impacts of trade rules on environmental sustainability, development, democracy, the lives of women and indigenous people and for rectifying existing agreements. However, so far these studies have been limited in analytical scope and the results have had effectively no impact on the EU’s trade policy-making.
The current methodology has show a clear bias towards liberalization and the inability to provide a comprehensive assessment of the combined economic, social and environmental impacts – till now treated in clinical isolation – has most probably resulted in an underestimation of the truthful impacts of the negotiations. Moreover, SIAs have failed to become an integral part of EU policy making, despite their objective of informing negotiators. Demand 10 The EU must ensure the revision of the methodology for SIAs in order to widen its analytical scope and remove its pro-liberalisation bias. The EU must also ensure that SIAs are carried out prior and during any negotiations taking place and that their findings are fully acknowledged and integrated within the negotiating mandate. Trade Ministers should be regularly briefed on the results of SIAs in oroverall coherence of the EU’s policy for sustainable development. |
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