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Should trade agreements be threatened with sanctions to enforce sustainability standards? The federal government is arguing about this. According to information from the ARD Capital Studios now defused.
Should the EU be able to threaten sanctions in trade agreements with other countries if they fail to meet agreed sustainability goals? The German foreign and economic ministries on the one hand and the chancellery on the other fought over this question – and now the chancellery has largely prevailed.
As the ARD Capital Studio learned from government circles that a corresponding passage in the new draft for a trade agreement with Kenya has been deleted. Instead, they want to “review” the sustainability standards after five years, it is now said.
cabinet has possibility of sanctions decided
Largely unnoticed by the public, the cabinet, including the SPD ministers, decided on a key issues paper last November. It said, among other things, that sustainability standards in the EU trade agreements would be “enshrined with sanctions”. The wording was written into the decision by the foreign and economic ministries, both led by the Greens.
Agreement could become a template for others
Not only Kenya resisted the passage until the end. Resistance was also growing in the SPD and in the Chancellery. The deputy spokesman for economic policy for the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Esra Limbacher, says ARD Capital Studio In addition, it is important to recognize “that we are not alone in the world and that we have to accept when it comes to trade agreements that there are different standards in other countries that we in Germany cannot change so easily.”
The agreement with the African country could now – without the threat of sanctions – be a template for other trade agreements such as those with the South American economic group Mercosur.
Further disputes over the possibility of sanctions between the Chancellery and the Ministry of Economics and Foreign Affairs seem programmed.