Trade

The EU is the world’s largest trading bloc, accounting for about a fifth of world trade in goods and services.

This means that Europeans’ consumption has a major impact on livelihoods and the global environment. Today, EU citizens use, on average, more than twice the amount of natural resources than those actually available in Europe.

This is only possible because Europeans increasingly rely on natural resources (such as water, fisheries, minerals, oil and gas) from the rest of the world.

This might not be a problem if there was a surplus capacity of natural resources in the rest of the world, but resource scarcities are growing. Europeans bear considerable responsibility for the depletion of the world’s fisheries and forests.

Trade is a means to development and a better quality of life, not an end in itself.

Rather than asking whether trade liberalisation is a good or bad thing, WWF asks what type of world we want to live in and what type of world do we want to pass on to future generations. And what is the role of international economic policy in helping to shape such a world?

Trade policy encompasses not only custom duties and other “on the border” measures. Many other economic tools are also available to policy-makers to influence trade flows, such as rules on subsidies, protection of intellectual property, harmonisation of product requirements or access to public procurement markets.

These tools should be used to strike the right balance between addressing the needs of today, particularly those of the poorest, and ensuring future generations’ welfare.