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India has raised concerns about the “unscientific’’ pesticide residue level specifications imposed by the European Union on import of farm products and the domestic content requirement in its renewable energy programmes at the 27-member bloc’s Trade Policy Review at the World Trade Organisation.
“We have been facing problems exporting farm and fishery products to the EU because of its unreasonably high quality specifications which are enhanced from time to time without any justification. This is a prime concern that we have voiced in the trade policy review,” a Commerce Department official told Business Line .
The WTO carries TPRs of each member state on a periodic basis analysing its strengths and weaknesses. Although a TPR is only an analysis of the level of a country’s engagement with the world, an unfavourable report could affect the way in which the global community views a specific country building pressure on it to change some of its policies.
India has been requesting the EU for some time to provide scientific justification for fixing Maximum Residue Levels (MRL) at the level of detection for pesticides which means that the more sophisticated device a country would use, the greater are the chances of detecting even negligible traces of pesticides.
India has maintained that keeping default levels on pesticide MRLs at the level of detection goes against the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) and countries need to provide a scientific justification for having any default level.
The EU, on the other hand, has been continuously putting the onus of providing the scientific justification on the exporting country.
The same norms are being used by the EU to detect arsenic level in fishery products resulting in increased rejection of consignments.
Renewable energy
Another area flagged by India in the TPR is the domestic content requirement, inserted both directly and indirectly by EU countries through various incentives given to local manufacturers, in their renewable energy programmes.
According to a paper on ‘Renewable Energy Programmes and Compatibility with WTO Laws’ brought out by the Centre For WTO Studies, the most important support instrument found in the EU is the FIT scheme, which is a fixed and guaranteed price paid to the eligible producers of electricity from renewable sources. Also member states apply FIT premiums, which incurs a ‘guaranteed premium paid in addition to the income producers receive for the electricity from renewable sources sold on the electricity market’.
“Also quota obligations are used to stimulate RE, which implies that the Government creates demand through imposing an obligation on consumers or suppliers to source a certain percentage of their electricity from renewable sources,” the paper said.
Most of the EU countries use a combination of support schemes, instead of relying only on particular category, the paper added.
While India has not been affected hugely by the domestic content measures in the EU, it is important for India to point these out as the EU is supporting the US in its dispute against India’s National Solar Mission which has local content norms.
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