The EU and Kenya have agreed on a free trade agreement. Import duties are to be eliminated in the future. Kenya sees this as a great opportunity – but there are also skeptical voices.
Flowers are being prepared for export at Pentaflowers, a company just outside the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. Hundreds of roses in all colors – many of them are sold in Germany.
Company boss Sabine Kontos explains that up to 300,000 flowers are sent out every day. “For us, it really works like this: we harvest and process the flowers in the morning, in the afternoon they are already on their way to the airport and in the evening they are already flying out.”
EU is Kenya’s most important export market
Alongside coffee and tea, roses are an important export commodity for Kenya. In future, the flowers will be able to be imported permanently duty-free onto the European market. To this end, the EU and Kenya have drawn up a trade agreement.
“We are not starting from scratch,” said EU Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, responsible for foreign trade, in Nairobi. “The EU is already one of Kenya’s most important trading partners. The flower industry exports 70 percent of its goods to Europe. This creates an estimated two and a half million direct and indirect jobs in the country.”
promoting sustainability
The agreement also means that the European Union wants to promote sustainable cultivation and transport methods in Kenya. In future, for example, roses should be carried out more on ships than on cargo planes in order to cause fewer CO2 emissions.
Kenya’s President William Ruto sees the agreement as an opportunity to further advance the economy of the East African country. “The European Union is Kenya’s second most important development partner after the World Bank. This shows the great partnership between our country and the EU.”
Duty-free imports from the EU
Kenya will only gradually open its market to duty-free imports from European countries. There should be protective measures for agriculture so that products from Europe do not destroy the domestic market.
Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati is nevertheless skeptical about the agreement. “The imbalance is huge. In my view, there are more advantages for the European Union. It will set the rules and standards. For example, Germany recently put a supply chain law into force and the trading partners have to comply with it. Here too, Kenya does not set itself set the rules.”
Africa important for the EU
Before the agreement can come into force, the EU Parliament and the member states still have to approve it. The European Union hopes that Kenya can open the door to similar agreements with other countries in East Africa.
Commitment to the continent is important for the EU because the growing population is creating an increasingly important sales market. The trade agreement with Kenya is also intended to help counter China’s growing influence in the region.
More security for companies
For Pentaflowers boss Sabine Kontos, the agreement means that after the uncertainties caused by the corona pandemic and the Ukraine war, there is more planning security for her flower farm again. She is glad that trade relations with European countries will soon be put on even more secure footing. “We’re looking forward to it, of course. And we’re more optimistic about the future.”