{"id":2070,"date":"2024-12-03T10:28:11","date_gmt":"2024-12-03T09:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/?p=2070"},"modified":"2025-12-02T10:54:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T09:54:49","slug":"trading-with-the-jungle-the-european-unions-generalised-scheme-of-preferences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/?p=2070","title":{"rendered":"Trading with the \u2018Jungle\u2019: The European Union\u2019s Generalised Scheme of Preferences"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Jan Orbie, Antonio Salvador Alcazar III and Tinus Sioen<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The notions of \u2018developing countries\u2019 and \u2018development cooperation\u2019 have been waning in discourses by scholars, policymakers and civil society actors. At least rhetorically, the colonial and patronising nature of these notions has been recognised at the European Union (EU) level. For instance, the Development Commissioner has been rechristened as the \u2018Commissioner of International Partnerships\u2019 since 2019. In recent years, the EU has pursued plenty of \u2018partnerships\u2019 in areas such as climate, energy, trade and deforestation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

To be clear, this partnership discourse is not new. Ever since decolonisation, the language of \u2018partnerships\u2019 has served to obfuscate global power asymmetries that continue to exist today. However, in times of increasing assertiveness of non-Western powers as well as rising geopolitical competition with China and Russia, EU policymakers claim to be presumably enacting a \u2018paradigm shift\u2019 beyond traditional development cooperation in a bid to win over \u2018partners\u2019 in the global souths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curiously, one EU policy area has totally ignored these tendencies: the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP)<\/a>. Since 1971, the EU\u2019s GSP has provided more access to the European single market for \u2018developing\u2019 countries. Tariffs differentiate depending on the type of country (e.g., \u2018least developed\u2019 countries receive zero tariffs and zero quotas under the Everything but Arms initiative) and the type of imports (e.g., sensitive products may still face high barriers). Market access has also been made conditional depending on the compliance of target countries with international conventions on human rights, labour standards, climate protection, and good governance \u2013 the so-called GSP+.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This trading system still fully embraces the development discourse. Our research<\/a>, based on 241 texts produced by the EU institutions, civil society organisations, media and political elites in Cambodia and the Philippines, shows the Eurocentric, colonial and modernist assumptions behind the EU\u2019s trade and development encounters with the global souths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the language around GSP reforms since 2021 reveals how EU public officials and policy stakeholders continue to imagine the so-called \u2018Global South\u2019: they are not yet developed, but we Europeans are developed; and this difference gives us the responsibility not only to help them, but also the necessity to leverage the EU\u2019s power to inculcate \u2018our\u2019 values, enforce domestic reforms elsewhere, and improve their \u2018unruly\u2019 behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The language of GSP continues to be entrenched in colonial tropes that have been strategically downplayed in other EU policy areas. We summarise our argument in seven points:<\/p>\n\n\n\n