Agrégateur de flux

Several international and European human rights organizations along with hundreds of social media activists took part in a huge social media campaign in front of the European Parliament in an attempt to raise awareness regarding the human rights situation in Sudan and the use of chemical weapons against civilians following the report of France 24 ,the French channel together with a euronews report that showed members of EUB network which demonstrates the use of chemical weapons against civilians by the Sudanese Armed forces.

The media campaign in Europe comes as a continuous action to support the work of several human rights organizations which called upon the EU and international community to tell the Sudanese Armed forces to stop the use of chemical weapons and to call for ceasefire and peace as well as bring humanitarian aid to a suffering population.

It is also an action to inform young people in Europe and beyond about this forgotten crisis which caused the death of more than 150,000 people, the famine of more than 25 million people and the displacement of more than 14 million people.

Andy Vermaut, journalist and human rights defender, regretted that “Egypt, our neighbor across the sands, has aligned itself with the Sudanese Armed Forces, offering support that sustains the cycle of violence—support driven by borders and waters shared, yet prolonging the very chaos that drives refugees to their doors, over two million strong, fleeing homes turned to ash.”

According to Vermaut, “Iran extends its reach, arming the army with drones and weapons that tear through communities—exporting turmoil to a land already scarred by division, where ambition overshadows aid. Turkey and Qatar, too, lend their hands—through arms, through influence—turning Sudan’s internal strife into a theater of international ambition, where the powerful play games and the powerless pay the price; where alliances meant for stability instead fuel the fires of destruction.”

Vermaut continued, “And then there are the weapons that haunt our collective conscience: reports of chemical agents, chlorine gas deployed by the Sudanese army against its own people—choking the air of hope in places like Khartoum, violating every principle of human decency, echoing the horrors of wars we vowed never to repeat.”

Sadaf Daneshizadeh, representative of “Prosperous Iran”, joined this campaign by highlighting that “The Sudanese conflict must be analyzed not only as an internal crisis, but also within the broader context of regional dynamics. Several external actors, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, appear to be playing an indirect but significant role, notably through military cooperation and the transfer of capabilities, such as drone systems. These interactions, even when presented as strictly bilateral or defensive, contribute to the prolongation of hostilities and the worsening of the humanitarian situation.”

Manel Msalmi, women’s rights advocate and human rights advisor at Milton Friedman Institute, mentioned the report of France 24 and stressed the fact that “We all share a joint duty to uphold the rights and dignity of every individual, regardless of their location. We must not choose silence in the face of inaction; rather, we should raise our voices and ensure that the plight of the Sudanese people is acknowledged. To advocate for and support the Sudanese population, it is crucial to stay updated on the circumstances. This report aims to draw the world’s attention on the swiftly changing situation, underline the dangers of a further decline, and stress the immediate actions that are necessary to avoid further escalation.”

All the participants called for an immediate action, a ceasefire and a peace plan which guarantees access to humanitarian aid, food and shelter and put an end to the huge displacement crisis.

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By Francesco Duina (Bates College, USA)

For decades, the EU has projected its internal legal frameworks onto the world. It has done so indirectly through the Brussels Effect, whereby countries and trading blocs in other parts of the world pre-emptively adopt EU internal standards in order to facilitate trade with the EU. And it has done so directly, by way of imposing its own standards through trade agreements. Given this, most observers of the EU have viewed it as an ‘exporter’ of norms – and this has represented perhaps its most important form of international power.

The possibility of the EU importing standards from other countries or blocs has been given little consideration. Instead, attention has consistently gone to the continued production of EU internal regulations which, once in place, have had significant external effects. The EU’s unabated propensity to regulate has sustained this interest: its various efforts to slow down or even reverse its regulatory output have come and gone, with little impact on the overall picture. Between 2019 and 2024 alone, for instance, the EU passed 13,000 legal acts. The EU has in turn relished the benefits associated with being the ‘first mover’ in new areas such as, say, digital markets and environmental policy: it knows that those who regulate first set the terms and that those who follow must at least consider them, especially if the first mover enjoys a huge internal market. These dynamics have turned the EU into a regulatory juggernaut committed to its internal standards and historically eager to have other countries and blocs adopt them.

The Animal Welfare Case

A recent development in animal welfare policy represents, however, a noteworthy departure from this pattern. I explained how and why this happened in my recent JCMS article. The EU – widely viewed as already having a wide-reaching regulatory framework in this policy area – was about to announce four long-awaited proposals in late 2023 on transport, slaughter, labelling, and the housing of animals. The Commission had determined that its existing frameworks, developed over the previous 25 years or so, required modernization. Equally important, major polls, the European Citizens’ Initiative ‘End the Age Cage’ that was supported by 170 non-governmental organisations and nearly 1.5 million citizens across the EU, and various protests, electoral campaigns and other civil society initiatives had put pressure on the EU. More broadly, the measures were consistent with its wider effort to ‘green’ agricultural trade.

Crucially, and not surprisingly, the four proposals would have come with ‘conditionality’ expectations: the requirement that trade partners exporting products into the EU comply in their treatment of animals with the standards set in those laws. An announcement by the Commission on the proposals was expected by the end of December 2023. But starting in the summer of that year the momentum slowed. Then, in her State of the Union speech in September, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signalled that something might go astray: there was no mention of animal welfare in her list of priorities. At the end of 2023, the Commission finally presented a proposal only on transport. The surprise turnaround caused significant consternation. The media publicised it, and NGOs and other interested parties voiced their objections (with, for instance, Eurogroup for Animals putting up posters in Brussels’ subway system) that continued well into late 2024.

What can explain this unexpected turn of events? Several factors surely played a role. These included powerful farmers’ protests against more agricultural regulation and unfair international competition, a diminished interest in the Commission’s Green Deal at a time when conservative populist parties seemed poised to do well in national and EU elections, and food security concerns fuelled by the war in Ukraine.

But the pending ratification of the EU-Mercosur trade deal (twenty years in the making) also played a (late-stage) role. In particular, Commission officials worried – whether justifiably or not – that the proposals’ conditionality clauses for exporters to the EU would have risked upsetting the South American countries given their lower standards.  These concerns led those officials to conclude that only one of the four proposals could go ahead. The EU-Mercosur trade deal thus became the ‘nail in the coffin’ for animal welfare progress in the EU.

What is crucial to emphasize here is that this meant not only a derailment of internal EU policy but, in effect, a willingness to accept that the lower standards of trading partners should be a cause of that derailment. Put differently, rather than a rule ‘giver’ the EU became in essence a rule ‘taker.’ Close attention should therefore go to how, exactly, Commission officials reached their position.

My analysis highlights the confluence of three dynamics. The first were institutional: competition amongst three directorates-general, with Directorate General Trade prevailing in its push to conclude the deal over the preferences of Director General Health (which supported the proposals) and Director General AGRI (which demanded that, should the proposals be pursued, conditionality had to be imposed). The second set of dynamics were temporal: animal welfare came to be seen as the ‘last straw’ in terms of EU demands on Mercosur especially because the EU had just months before greatly frustrated the Mercosur countries with extensive demands on deforestation. The third were symbolic: the Commission had made increasingly vocal public commitments to conclude several major trade deals in the very near future.

The Broader Lessons

The derailment of EU animal welfare policy thus offers us an opportunity to observe a sort of reversal of the EU’s ability to project its regulatory power. As such, it also prompts us to reflect on two broader points related to the nexus between EU trade policy and its regulatory power.

First, when it comes to trade, the EU may no longer be fundamentally concerned with the projection of regulatory power. We know that the Commission has already asserted, in part given its new Open Strategic Autonomy direction, the importance of geopolitical priorities as it pursues trade opportunities across the world. Regulatory power may become a victim of this new approach.

Second, there may be subject areas where the EU will struggle to impose its regulatory standards onto its trading partners, even if it wants to do so. There is in fact something particular about animal welfare that also applies to policy areas like the environment and labour standards. The target is not the physical standards of finished products that exporters wish to send to the EU. Instead, it is the processes associated with the production of those products. These are much harder to observe and measure, and ultimately make intrusive demands on the trading partners. The EU will therefore likely find it rather difficult to project its standards in those areas.

Francesco Duina is Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology at Bates College (USA). His research focuses on the relationship between the economy, culture, and politics.  He co-edited Standardizing the World: EU Trade Policy and the Road to Convergence, published by Oxford University Press.

Website: https://www.bates.edu/faculty/profile/francesco-g-duina/

 

The post Always a Norm Exporter? The Case of Animal Welfare Policy and Trade appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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