Agricultural Trade
In the area of agriculture and agricultural trade, lawyers in the firm have gathered over the years extensive experience in the European Community’s common organisation of selected agricultural markets, CAP reform, interaction between producer organisations and EU institutions or EU Member States, EU food law, novel foods, additives, labelling, packaging, traceability, food contact materials, plant and animal health, regulation of GMOs, setting of maximum residue levels on food products and foodstuffs, and broad experience negotiating, administering and challenging a variety of tariff and non-tariff barriers used by countries and WTO Members in regulating trade in agricultural products and foodstuffs.
Lawyers within the firm have, individually or collectively, advised Governments, trade associations or individual traders or producers on the impact of WTO or FTA negotiations on their core agricultural interests, providing assistance to either negotiate or challenge complex agreements on agricultural instruments such as tariff rate quotas, domestic support mechanisms, market access opportunities, NTBs (particularly in the areas of sanitary and phytosanitary regulation or technical regulation, conformity assessment and testing, control and certification), import licensing procedures and safeguards.
Large part of this advice is normally provided either in the context of international trade negotiations on agriculture or in relation to WTO dispute settlement procedures.
Our lawyers have worked on these issues with the European Commission, individual EU Member States, third countries, the WTO, FAO, UNCTAD, ITC, the World Bank, and a multitude of trade associations and individual operators.
Below is a list of some of the relevant experiences in the area of agricultural trade and regulation (in reverse chronological order):
- Advice to the Government of Vietnam in relation to its WTO accession negotiations on agriculture, early implementation commitments, SPS and TBT issues related to agriculture (i.e., equivalency, traceability, labelling, rules of origin, safeguards, etc.) and subsidization practices;
- Legal assistance to a South American country to analyse the WTO consistency of certain countries’ domestic support mechanisms and differential export taxes in the areas of agricultural trade of cereals, dairy and foodstuffs;
- Advice and legal representation of the Government of Turkey on dispute settlement proceedings relating to market access in the rice sector, import licensing and TRIMs;
- Assessment and legal advice on Argentina’s rights under GATT Articles XIII and XXVIII in relation to the re-negotiations of tariffs and establishment of tariff-rate quotas on poultry products by the EU;
- Counsel to two multinational corporations on EU and WTO issues of customs valuation, rules of origin, duty suspension, classification and general trade applicable to the fruit and vegetable sector and to chemical products for agricultural production;
- Legal assistance to 14 sugar producing ACP Countries in the WTO consultations-phase between the EU and Brazil/Australia in the EC-Sugar dispute;
- Advice to several Latin American bananas producing countries and bananas traders in relation to access to the EU market (i.e., import licensing procedures, SPS regulation, TBT measures, customs valuation, common market organization, tariff negotiation, etc.);
- Assistance to two South Asian major agricultural exporting countries in order to establish a negotiating strategy for the Doha Round of multilateral WTO negotiations on agriculture;
- Advice to the European Commission (DG Trade) on market access issues with respect to trade in the food sector between the EU and Eastern Europe, Russia, Asian countries and South America;
- Legal counsel to certain Indian sugar and gherkins producers on strategies and requirements for increased market access to the EU; and
- Assistance to Latvia’s Ministry of Agriculture on drafting, inter alia, an EU-compatible and WTO-consistent law on the market organization for wine.
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