Exporting Europe's Protectionism

http://www.itssd.org/Publications/Kogan%20TNI%2077FINAL.pdf


Exporting Europe's Protectionism


Lawrence A. Kogan


The National Interest Journal


Number 77, Fall 2004, pp. 91-99


Due to its different view concerning the role of 'science' in assessing and managing public risks, the EU has effectively challenged the U.S./WTO risk evaluation framework seeking to establish the precautionary principle, a 'better safe than sorry' rule, as an absolute international standard by which all products, no matter where they are produced, are determined to be safe or harmful.


This challenge threatens the competitiveness of U.S. and other non-EU industries because it seeks to transform the current predictable risk-based evaluation system premised on objective empirical (technical) science, exposure data and, to a large extent, economic cost benefit analysis, into a subjective framework in which pre-risk assessment screening based on cultural moral values and demographic risk aversion (consumer fear perceptions) and hazard profiling based on intrinsic substance characteristics prevails.


The EU has endeavored to change the current framework by embedding the precautionary principle into overly stringent health and safety and environment regulations and technical product standards (in excess of international standards), and then exporting those regulations and standards abroad down industry supply chains throughout the world via international treaties, international standardization bodies and bilateral technical capacity building intiatives.


Examples of this include EU biotech labeling and traceability regulations that implement EU obligations under the Biosafety Protocol to the U.N. Biodiversity Convention and the proposed EU REACH regulation, which is intended to serve as a template for global chemicals management.


In essence, the EU exports the high cost of precautionary regulation and standardization abroad in order to 'level the global economic playing field' (as a form of protectionism to compensate) for its lagging, less cost-efficient or otherwise technologically underdeveloped industries.


Lastly, the EU and its member states also fund non-governmental environmental groups, both in Europe and other countries, that are actively engaged in pursuing antiglobalization and anti-technology campaigns. These campaigns threaten government and company technological innovation and research and development programs.