News and press releases

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16 September 2021

Ahead of the COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference, set to be held in Glasgow this November, actors of the global Fair Trade movement have published a position paper calling on the international community to ensure that ambitious climate aims go hand in hand with climate and trade justice goals.

Every human being on the planet will be affected by the consequences of climate change if decisive action is not taken soon. However, we will not all suffer from it to the same extent. The structural inequalities in our economic systems that the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare could be exacerbated by a rapidly changing climate.  The contributions of farmers, workers, and producers are key to address this issue and achieve a sustainable future. This will require the eradication of business models based on an extreme imbalance in negotiating power between buyer companies and producers that lead to the former imposing abusive conditions on the latter.

There can be no climate justice without fair trade. It would be unacceptable for farmers and producers to bear the full costs of the climate transition on their own. Policymakers must ensure they receive the support they need to make this shift while making sure they obtain fair prices for their products.

#TradeJustice4Climate

“We should make Europe the first Fair Trade continent.”

Is this possible? How fair is EU trade anyway?

On the 30th of June, a group of students had the chance to quiz four Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in an online discussion on the future of trade in Europe.

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New report outlines how municipalities can integrate the circular economy into their public procurement practices. read more

24 May 2021

In the face of recent opposition addressed to the EU Commission by some business associations and specific governments from Nordic Europe, NGOs have reiterated their support for the European Commission commitment to present an initiative on Sustainable Corporate Governance in 2021, following the roadmap set in the EU Green Deal and the Action Plan on Sustainable Finance. 

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On Monday 1 March, The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) along with 13 civil society organisations and trade unions, has published a joint statement on the transposition of the EU Directive on Unfair Trading Practices (UTP) in the Agricultural and Food Supply Chain. Only two months are left before the deadline for EU Member States to transpose these EU rules. The Statement calls for ambitious national laws transposing the Directive in every single EU Member State. read more

Brussels, 18 February 2021 – Valdis Dombrovskis, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission has unveiled today the new EU Trade Policy, which builds on three main pillars: openness, sustainability and assertiveness. The Fair Trade movement welcomes the commitment to “promote value chains that are circular, responsible and sustainable” but regrets the lack of concrete proposals to make this happen. read more

On the 14th of January, the FTAO and the municipality of Bremen hosted a hands-on online event aimed at exploring how public authorities can better procure within planetary boundaries by integrating Fair Trade, Circular Economy, as well as other social, environmental, and innovation concerns into their public procurement strategies and practices. read more

In June 2020, the European Commission launched a major review of the EU’s trade and investment policy. Following a recent call from Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to include a Fair Trade sub-section in the new EU Trade Strategy, Commission Executive Vice-President and Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis was invited to join the European Parliament’s annual Fair Trade Breakfast yesterday (8 December 2020) to further engage in constructive dialogue. read more

The EU is committed to contributing to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the goals set by the Paris Agreement. Under the European Green Deal, it has explicitly committed to ensure that “[a]ll EU actions and policies should pull together to help the EU achieve a successful and just transition towards a sustainable future.” Competition law cannot remain an exception to this move towards coherence, and the FTAO is glad to have participated in two parallel policy processes through which we except the Commission to strengthen the synergies between competition law and sustainability. read more

As business leaders strive for sustainability, systemic problems such as poor working conditions, unfair distribution of profits and wasteful consumption patterns will undermine Europe’s quest for a fair and truly circular economy.

An increasing number of businesses market themselves and their products as being sustainable and circular. Yet, whether new business models actually deliver resource savings and sufficiently consider other aspect such as social equity remains an open question.

A new report by Circle Economy, the European Environmental Bureau and the Fair Trade Advocacy Office launches a debate on what constitutes truly sustainable business models.
The report identifies blind spots in the European textile and electronics sectors, helping policymakers and business leaders understand how they can address the manifold challenges of the post COVID-19 economy. read more