The push to link trade measures to migration policy comes amid major advances by far-right parties across Europe and calls for governments to get tougher on enforcing returns. Currently, only a small share of those eligible for removal from the EU are actually deported — many because their home countries refuse to cooperate.
“In case of serious and systematic shortcomings related to the international obligation to readmit a beneficiary country’s own nationals, the preferential arrangements … may be withdrawn temporarily, in respect of all or of certain products originating in that beneficiary country, where the Commission considers that an insufficient level of cooperation on readmission persists,” it reads.
The readmission clause will be applied with more or less stringent conditions depending on a country’s development level, the document also says.
The measures, which would only be invoked after dialog with countries, are being included in an overhaul of the so-called Generalized Scheme of Preferences, a 50-year old program that enables poorer countries to export goods to EU countries at lower tariff rates.
The review of the program, which has been under negotiation for over three years, is designed to help these nations build their economies and is tied to the implementation of human rights, labor and environmental reforms.
However, the issue of cheap rice imports from Pakistan or Bangladesh threatened to collapse the talks before the eventual agreement on Monday, amid concerns from EU producers like Spain and Italy that want to ensure their own farmers are not outcompeted.