In 2014, the Fair Trade movement embarked on a journey to intersect with the intricate realm of Competition Law, and later “antitrust” in particular. This encounter sought to address anticompetitive agreements and regulations governing collaborations on critical sustainability issues within markets. It started with a report examining Competition Law and its intersection to Sustainability in the Netherlands commissioned by the Fair Trade Advocacy Office and gained momentum when multi-stakeholder settings, some in which the Fair Trade movement was involved, revealed that EU Competition Law was perceived as a burden to agreements
on some aspects around sustainability. The lack of clarity around the extent to which sustainability-oriented agreements could breach EU Competition Law led to a dichotomy where some market actors were afraid of collectively discussing price-related issues such as the payment of Living Income or Living Wage, while others used it as an excuse to evade discussions on these crucial matters.
Studies, commissioned by the Fairtrade Foundation UK, found that the lack of clarity around EU Competition Law continued to prevent any meaningful progress in combating low prices to farmers, which is a major issue in the cocoa sector and beyond. According to the authors “this really restricts further progress being made on other issues such as living incomes and wages.”