The EU's Protection of Forests through Trade: Varying Forest Conditions Leading to an Uneven Regulation
(2023) Young Legal Researcher Conference 2023 — Location: Faculty of Law, University of Hasselt, Belgium (1.December.2023)
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- Abstract
- Among the various elements of the European Green Deal (EGD), the objective to preserve and restore ecosystems and biodiversity has led the EU to adopt several plans and legislations, often being among the most ambitious regulators in that regard. In particular, as a type of ecosystem that provides many “ecosystem services” (food, water filtration, preservation of genetic libraries, regulation of climate, etc.), forests have been the object of many political initiatives and legislations at international, European or national level, and this long before the EGD. However, the latter has been accompanied by two important Commission communications, the first targeting forests beyond its borders (COM(2019) 352 final) and the second forests within the territory of its Member States (COM(2021) 572 final). Both mention the role of trade in deforestation and recommend the adoption of measures regulating the trade of products whose harvest implies harm to forests. This resulted in Regulation 2023/1115 whose aim is to reduce deforestation and forest degradation through controls on the import and export of products derived from a select list of commodities: cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya and wood. As it targets both products entering and exiting the EU market, the regulation applies in theory equally to EU and non-EU countries. However, besides wood and cattle, the targeted commodities are not or scarcely produced in EU territory but are imported in great quantity. One could thus consider that the regulation is uneven in its real ambit and that it is a use, by the EU, of the importance of its single market in order to force its economic standards on third countries for whom it might be economically or legally unmanageable. The presentation shall analyse the legislation on this basis, exploring the mechanisms for its extraterritorial application, notably their cost-effectiveness, the real geographical repartition of affected countries, and how well it might effectively lead to more sustainable production practices. Ultimately, it shall underline the way the Brussels Effect allows the EU to dictate its rules to third countries and question the opportunity of the chosen method.
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Martens, G. (2023). The EU’s Protection of Forests through Trade: Varying Forest Conditions Leading to an Uneven Regulation. Young Legal Researcher Conference 2023, Faculty of Law, University of Hasselt, Belgium. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/245603