How technology amplifies workers’ voices in supply chains – and what can convince business to lend an ear
How technology amplifies workers’ voices in supply chains – and what can convince business to lend an ear
Social responsibility’s Blue Planet II moment is yet to come. But while we’ve certainly been missing a mass epiphany in this area, there have already been some harrowing examples: messages slipped inside garments by desperate forced labourers in China that British fast-fashion shoppers came upon for example, or, more recently, the 400 eastern European victims of a Polish gang who ensnared them in forced labour on farms, waste recycling plants and parcel sorting factories after infiltrating a recruitment company.
Still, it seems that – as Professor Brad Blitz, head of the government-sponsored British Academy research programme wrote in 2019 – “there are low levels of public awareness and engagement with the issue of modern slavery within the UK”, with 2020 having only aggravated the situation, as the pandemic upstaged most burning social issues and a shift to online retail created unprecedented demand for casual labour.
It’s difficult to say how the social aspect of sustainability came to lag so far behind the environmental. In 2015 the UK’s was the first national government to legislate a modern slavery act. As a result, companies with budgets of £36 million or more are required to make a public statement listing the actions they have taken to ensure that slavery, human trafficking and child labour are eliminated from their supply chains. In response to criticism that the legislation doesn’t have enough clout, a new enforcement body is being set up and civil penalties for non-compliance will be introduced later this year.
Moreover, the idea of ethical trade along supply chains is nothing new. The Fairtrade Foundation started in Britain in the 1990s, and consumers who brought products sporting the label were guaranteed that the premium they paid for their tea, bananas and a variety of other products would be reinvested to improve the wages and living conditions of the labourers who produced them. Meanwhile, they could also rest assured that the farmers who didn’t meet Fairtrade’s social, labour and environmental standards would be expelled from the club.
But it seems that a study in 2014, which found that wages on Fairtrade farms were often lower than on large ones not certified by the organisation, somewhat undermined consumer trust in the movement, and supermarkets increasingly exited the system to establish their own “fairtrade” labels – a string of events that customers may have found disorienting or even disillusioning.
Cascading socially responsible work practices down the supply chain is often a stumbling block for today’s global businesses too. Very often, modern slavery statements report full mapping only for the company’s tier one and tier two suppliers and tend to only partially map the rest of the supply chain until it fades into oblivion.
It’s outside the remit of the British government to police companies in foreign countries that don’t adhere to labour laws in force in the UK. All it can do is encourage companies with sprawling supply chains to “investigate their high-risk suppliers through direct engagement with that supplier’s workers.”
Human rights tech and worker voice tools
Higher legal expectations of large corporations to have a better visibility of their suppliers’ working conditions have given rise to so-called worker voice tools (WVT). Building mostly on the ubiquity of mobile phones, these apps can serve both as platforms for regular worker surveys comprising a set of pre-formulated questions, or as digital, well-targeted versions of the cry-for-help notes hidden inside jeans by forced labourers. (The messages can then trigger supply chain audits, or be checked against information gleaned from satellite imaging or AI-driven data analytics.)
Although digital technology shows great potential in filling the information gap in expansive supply chains, privacy, confidentiality and the lack of trust seem to remain issues that developers need to address.
In order to provide protection from the employer’s retaliation, for example, anonymity is key when collecting grievances directly from a suppliers’ workers. The technology to enable this is already there. The blockchain, combined with the right encryption technology and applied to WVTs, can ensure that the identity of the worker who uses it is verified but not revealed by the system.
However, there is also the human factor. Do these workers across continents and endless supply chains have the willingness and skills to take advantage of these technologies? Many of them have to become aware of the human rights these apps are designed to protect in the first place.
Research also shows that how these digital tools are presented to employees plays a seminal role in their uptake. Workers seem to trust a WVT much more if it’s geared towards their welfare and not due diligence. Also, they are much more relaxed about using them for peer-to-peer communication about working conditions than reporting grievances.
In the supply chain visibility buzz brought about by the Modern Slavery Act, a couple of worker-driven social responsibility initiatives have already been launched. The one run by Levi Strauss in Mexico in 2019, and Geneva-based NGO slavefreetrade’s widely-promoted human rights compliance platform are two examples that stand out. However, the most accessible and relevant tool currently seems to be the Voice app of RBA (Responsible Business Alliance), an industry coalition whose members have supply chains employing 3.5 million people from more than 120 countries.
RBA’s and other technologies helping to flag up slave labour more efficiently can give a major boost to supply chain transparency. But envisaging forced labourers in dismal far-off sweatshops submitting workplace abuse complaints to distant responsible-sourcing officers they haven’t ever met seems a bit of a stretch at present.
What can make it real, though, is a more articulate and consistent consumer intention to stay away from products that come from supply chains tarnished by forced and child labour – or indeed, hazardous working conditions and sub-minimum wages. If they don’t wait for a shocking labour rights disaster to stir them into action but act proactively, it could prove a much-needed catalyst for anti-slavery law compliance and the uptake of workers’ voice technology as well.
by Zita Goldman
These are the plastic items that most kill whales, dolphins, turtles and seabirds
These are the plastic items that most kill whales, dolphins, turtles and seabirds
How do we save whales and other marine animals from plastic in the ocean? Our new review shows reducing plastic pollution can prevent the deaths of beloved marine species. Over 700 marine species, including half of the world’s cetaceans (such as whales and dolphins), all of its sea turtles and a third of its seabirds, are known to ingest plastic.
When animals eat plastic, it can block their digestive system, causing a long, slow death from starvation. Sharp pieces of plastic can also pierce the gut wall, causing infection and sometimes death. As little as one piece of ingested plastic can kill an animal.
About eight million tonnes of plastic enters the ocean each year, so solving the problem may seem overwhelming. How do we reduce harm to whales and other marine animals from that much plastic?
Like a hospital overwhelmed with patients, we triage. By identifying the items that are deadly to the most vulnerable species, we can apply solutions that target these most deadly items.
Some plastics are deadlier than others
In 2016, experts identified four main items they considered to be most deadly to wildlife: fishing debris, plastic bags, balloons and plastic utensils.
We tested these expert predictions by assessing data from 76 published research papers incorporating 1,328 marine animals (132 cetaceans, 20 seals and sea lions, 515 sea turtles and 658 seabirds) from 80 species.
We examined which items caused the greatest number of deaths in each group, and also the “lethality” of each item (how many deaths per interaction). We found the experts got it right for three of four items.
Flexible plastics, such as plastic sheets, bags and packaging, can cause gut blockage and were responsible for the greatest number of deaths over all animal groups. These film plastics caused the most deaths in cetaceans and sea turtles. Fishing debris, such as nets, lines and tackle, caused fatalities in larger animals, particularly seals and sea lions.
Turtles and whales that eat debris can have difficulty swimming, which may increase the risk of being struck by ships or boats. In contrast, seals and sea lions don’t eat much plastic, but can die from eating fishing debris.
Balloons, ropes and rubber, meanwhile, were deadly for smaller fauna. And hard plastics caused the most deaths among seabirds. Rubber, fishing debris, metal and latex (including balloons) were the most lethal for birds, with the highest chance of causing death per recorded ingestion.
What’s the solution?
The most cost-efficient way to reduce marine megafauna deaths from plastic ingestion is to target the most lethal items and prioritise their reduction in the environment.
Targeting big plastic items is also smart, as they can break down into smaller pieces. Small debris fragments such as microplastics and fibres are a lower management priority, as they cause significantly fewer deaths to megafauna and are more difficult to manage.
Flexible film-like plastics, including plastic bags and packaging, rank among the ten most common items in marine debris surveys globally. Plastic bag bans and fees for bags have already been shown to reduce bags littered into the environment. Improving local disposal and engineering solutions to enable recycling and improve the life span of plastics may also help reduce littering.
Lost fishing gear is particularly lethal. Fisheries have high gear loss rates: 5.7% of all nets and 29% of all lines are lost annually in commercial fisheries. The introduction of minimum standards of loss-resistant or higher quality gear can reduce loss.
Other steps can help, too, including
- incentivising gear repairs and port disposal of damaged nets
- penalising or prohibiting high-risk fishing activities where snags or gear loss are likely
- and enforcing penalties associated with dumping.
Outreach and education to recreational fishers to highlight the harmful effects of fishing gear could also have benefit.
Balloons, latex and rubber are rare in the marine environment, but are disproportionately lethal, particularly to sea turtles and seabirds. Preventing intentional balloon releases and accidental release during events and celebrations would require legislation and a shift in public will.
The combination of policy change with behaviour change campaigns are known to be the most effective at reducing coastal litter across Australia.
Reducing film-like plastics, fishing debris and latex/balloons entering the environment would likely have the best outcome in directly reducing mortality of marine megafauna.
Lauren Roman, Postdoctoral Researcher, Oceans and Atmosphere, CSIRO; Britta Denise Hardesty, Principal Research Scientist, Oceans and Atmosphere Flagship, CSIRO; Chris Wilcox, Senior Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO, and Qamar Schuyler, Research Scientist, Oceans and Atmospheres, CSIRO
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Covid vaccine supply is causing an EU crisis – so what’s being done to speed up production?
Covid vaccine supply is causing an EU crisis – so what’s being done to speed up production?
The EU has a vaccine shortage problem. AstraZeneca pledged earlier this month to supply 2 million doses a week to the UK, but has also said it will cut deliveries to the EU from 80 million doses to 31 million during the first quarter of 2021.
The UK has vaccinated more than 11% of its population so far. EU nations such as Italy, Poland, Finland and Germany have only vaccinated between 2% and 3%. After the tense Brexit negotiations and the criticism the UK received for not joining the EU vaccine procurement scheme, this difference is stark. The EU, understandably, is keen not to fall further behind in rolling out vaccines and so has demanded it be given doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine made in the UK.
Whether the EU’s contract with AstraZeneca is a commitment to deliver certain quantities or an agreement for the company to do its “best effort” is contested. The content of the contract and timings of orders will be at the core of arguments over who should receive stock and when. The dispute continues.
This is all down to the vaccine pipeline being squeezed – but why are vaccine manufacturers struggling to keep up the pace of production? Details of the contracts between vaccine producers and the UK or the EU are not publicly available, but what is known about the vaccines’ supply chains can explain some of the reasons for the current shortage.
Lower production output
The immediate problem stated by AstraZeneca is a lower than expected output at a manufacturing site in its European supply chain. This can happen because vaccines are complex biological products: the production process does not always yield the same amount of usable vaccine. Stringent quality checks are also in place to ensure that all batches are safe. If the quality is not right, less vaccine becomes available.
According to AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot, issues with yield are to be expected when rapidly increasing production. He says that such problems have also occurred in plants in Australia, the US and the UK. However, as the UK signed its contract three months earlier than the EU, there was more time to resolve any teething issues.
Issues can interrupt operations too. Vaccine production at an AstraZeneca site in Wales had to be paused for several hours while a suspect package was investigated. And in India, a fire at the Serum Institute (the world’s largest vaccine producer, which has a licence to produce the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine) claimed several lives, but reportedly did not affect production.
To deliver billions of vaccines to the world, production capacity has to be large – but increasing it can lead to delays as well. Pfizer announced a temporary decrease in output in order to expand a Belgian factory, for example. The Belgian plant is the core supplier of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines for Canada, the EU and the UK, which shows how widespread knock-on effects can be.
How to safeguard production
One way around this problem is to increase capacity by working with competitors. For instance, the French pharmaceuticals company Sanofi has announced that it will produce more than 100 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine. This puts Sanofi’s existing production capacity to use even though its own Covid-19 vaccines are experiencing delays. Such “coopetition” – simultaneous competition and cooperation – is not unusual in supply chains.
Another way to bolster production is to use regional supply chains to make and distribute vaccines, with each serving only particular parts of the world. Not relying on just one supply chain enhances overall resilience; if something goes wrong in one supply chain, the others can still function. Spreading production around the world – which is what AstraZeneca has done – also means easier access to appropriate facilities and trained staff. 
However, this strategy is now at the heart of the disagreement with the EU. The EU is suggesting that the shortfall in yield at a Belgian AstraZeneca plant should be made up by distributing doses produced in the UK. But that would mean an inability to fulfil contractual obligations to Britain.
To avoid these sorts of issues, other countries are keen to set up their own vaccine production sites. Australia has announced it has paid a premium to produce the AstraZeneca vaccine domestically. From March, its output is expected to be around 1 million doses per week.
But domestic production is also not without its problems. Brazil plans to rely mainly on domestic production and has a strong pharmaceutical industry to support this. But it needs to import key ingredients, a process that is currently hampered by bureaucratic hurdles and technical issues. It will still rely on supply chains elsewhere – particularly in India and China.
The cost of ‘vaccine nationalism’
At the moment, demand for Covid-19 vaccines is much higher than supply. Competition to secure doses is fierce, with many disappointed parties demanding answers – when the vaccines will arrive and in what quantity. Uncertainty may lead to vaccine protectionism, with stock produced in key locations withheld and hoarded to serve only local populations.
But while rich countries’ concerns about delayed deliveries are valid, it’s important to keep in mind that many nations will not have widespread access to vaccines in 2021. Concern about the lack of equal access to medicines has been voiced globally, nationally and regionally, as government bodies attempt to secure vaccines for their populations.
Developed nations focusing on themselves is not going to help solve a global crisis. As long as the virus is free to spread and mutate in some countries, no country is safe. The global economy could lose more than US$9 trillion (£6.6 trillion) if governments fail to ensure developing economies have access to Covid-19 vaccines. This vast figure points to the dangers of these current moves towards self-interest.
Liz Breen, Director of the Digital Health Enterprise Zone (DHEZ), University of Bradford, Reader in Health Service Operations, University of Bradford and Sarah Schiffling, Senior Lecturer in Supply Chain Management, Liverpool John Moores University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
How life-cycle assessments can be (mis)used to justify more single-use plastic packaging
How life-cycle assessments can be (mis)used to justify more single-use plastic packaging
After banning plastic bags last year, New Zealand now proposes to regulate single-use plastic packaging and to ban various hard-to-recycle plastics and single-use plastic items.
These moves come in response to growing public concern about plastics, increasing volumes of plastic in the environment, mounting evidence of negative environmental and health impacts of plastic pollution and the role plastics play in the global climate crisis.
Addressing plastic packaging is key to reversing these negative trends. It accounts for 42% of all non-fibre plastics produced.
But the plastics industry is pushing back. Industry representatives claim efforts to regulate plastic packaging will have negative environmental consequences because plastic is a lightweight material with a lower carbon footprint than alternatives like glass, paper and metal.
These claims are based on what’s known as life-cycle assessment (LCA). It’s a tool used to measure and compare the environmental impact of materials throughout their life, from extraction to disposal.
Industry arguments to justify plastic packaging
LCA has been used to measure the impact of packaging ever since the Coca-Cola Company commissioned the first comprehensive assessment in 1969.
While independent LCA practitioners may adopt rigorous processes, the method is vulnerable to misuse. According to European waste management consultancy Eunomia, it is limited by the questions it seeks to answer:
Ask inappropriate, misleading, narrow or uninformed questions and the process will only provide answers in that vein.
Industry-commissioned life-cycle assessments often frame single-use plastic packaging positively. These claim plastic’s light weight offsets its harmful impacts on people, wildlife and ecosystems. Some studies are even used to justify the continued expansion of plastics production.
But plastic can come out looking good when certain important factors are overlooked. In theory, LCA considers a product’s whole-of-life environmental impact. In practice, the scope varies as practitioners select system boundaries at their discretion.
Zero Waste Europe has highlighted that life-cycle assessment for food packaging often omits important considerations. These include the potential toxicity of different materials, or the impact of leakage into the environment. Excluding factors like this gives plastics an unjustified advantage.
Researchers have acknowledged the method’s critical failure to account for marine pollution. This is now a priority for the research community, but not the plastics industry.
Even questionable LCA studies carry a veneer of authority in the public domain. The packaging industry capitalises on this to distract, delay and derail progressive plastics legislation. Rebutting industry studies that promote the environmental superiority of plastics is difficult because commissioning a robust LCA is costly and time-consuming.
Life-cycle assessment and packaging policy
LCA appeals to policymakers aspiring to develop evidence-based packaging policy. But if the limitations are not properly acknowledged or understood, policy can reinforce inaccurate industry narratives.
The Rethinking Plastics in Aotearoa New Zealand report, from the office of the prime minister’s chief science adviser, has been influential in plastics policy in New Zealand.
The report dedicates an entire chapter to LCA. It includes case studies that do not actually take a full life-cycle approach from extraction to disposal. It concedes only on the last page that LCA does not account for the environmental, economic or health impacts of plastics that leak into the environment.
The report also erroneously suggests LCA is “an alternative approach” to the zero-waste hierarchy. In fact, the two tools work best together.
The zero-waste hierarchy prioritises strategies to prevent, reduce and reuse packaging. That’s based on the presumption that these approaches have lower life-cycle impacts than recycling and landfilling.
One of LCA’s limitations is that practitioners tend to compare materials already available on the predominantly single-use packaging market. However, an LCA guided by the waste hierarchy would include zero-packaging or reusable packaging systems in the mix. Such an assessment would contribute to sustainable packaging policy.
New Zealand already has growing numbers of zero-waste grocers, supplied by local businesses delivering their products in reusable bulk packaging. We have various reuse schemes for takeaways.
New Zealand is also a voluntary signatory to the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, which includes commitments by businesses and government to increase reusable packaging by 2025.
Prominent organisations, including the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, estimate reusables could replace 30% of single-use plastic packaging by 2040. The Pew report states:
A reduction of plastic production — through elimination, the expansion of consumer reuse options, or new delivery models — is the most attractive solution from environmental, economic and social perspectives.
The plastics industry has misused LCA to argue that attempts to reduce plastic pollution will result in bad climate outcomes. But increasingly, life-cycle assessments that compare packaging types across the waste hierarchy are revealing that this trade-off is mostly a single-use packaging problem.
Policymakers should take life-cycle assessment beyond its industry-imposed straitjacket and allow it to inform zero-packaging and reusable packaging system design. Doing so could help New Zealand reduce plastic pollution, negative health impacts and greenhouse gas emissions.
Trisia Farrelly, Senior Lecturer, Massey University; Hannah Blumhardt, Senior Associate at the Institute of Governance and Policy Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington, and Takunda Y Chitaka, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of the Western Cape
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The journey towards sustainable packaging
The journey towards sustainable packaging
Global waste is expected to increase by 70 per cent over the next 30 years unless we take action now. Colgate-Palmolive has a plan
Every year, the world dumps approximately 2.12 billion tons of waste – an amount so massive that if it were to be put in trucks they would encircle the world 24 times.
In order to tackle this critical issue, corporations must make sustainability a priority by setting measurable goals, innovating, collaborating and preparing for anything.
Setting measurable goals
As the stewards of Colgate, a brand found in more homes than any other, Colgate-Palmolive has an awesome responsibility to make sustainability a household habit. As such, the company has set goals for creating a healthier and more sustainable future for people, their pets and our planet, including measurable targets to design sustainable products, accelerate action on climate change, drive social impact and eliminate plastic waste. Indeed, Colgate has committed to eliminating a third of new plastics in its products and packaging and to achieve 100 per cent recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging by 2025.
Innovate for success
In a circular economy, plastic never becomes waste or pollution. Yet in the consumer-packaged goods (CPG) industry alone, more than one billion toothpaste tubes (which until recently were not recyclable) are thrown out annually in the US. With that in mind, Colgate has created a new type of plastic tube with the same kind of recyclable plastic used to manufacture plastic bottles. The result of five years of research and development, it is a first-of-its-kind toothpaste tube that can be recycled without any adjustments or additional investments to the current recycling infrastructure required.
Collaborate across sectors
But it’s not enough if only one company is using a recyclable toothpaste tube; we must join forces if we are to make a true impact and contribute to the circular economy. Given that the CPG industry must embrace recyclable tubes across all categories, not just toothpaste, Colgate is sharing its recyclable tube technology with third parties, including competitors, to make it easier for companies to make the switch.
Ultimately, a more sustainable future cannot be realised unless we all work together. Without the support of the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) in North America and RecyClass in Europe, Colgate’s recyclable tube would not have received the necessary recognition to be recycled through conventional channels. This type of close collaboration and partnership between companies, organisations and third parties is essential for creating a healthier, greener planet.
Another valuable collaboration has been our longstanding partnership with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation initiative for a New Plastics Economy, which sets high standards for signatories that band together to make a meaningful difference. In addition, through our relationship with Green Business Certification, Inc, Colgate has developed and implemented innovative procedures to repurpose waste at its manufacturing facilities: indeed, we have the most GBCI TRUE Zero Waste-certified buildings of any company worldwide. Colgate is also exploring new ways to deliver products with support from our partners, from toothpaste and soap in tablet-form to encouraging reusable containers by participating in the Algramo pilot programme.
Expect the unexpected
The impact of climate change on our world – and our awareness of it – has intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic. We’ve witnessed how changes in our daily routines, such as driving to work or grocery shopping, have significant effects on health and human safety. We also learned that both companies and consumers are part of the solution. Companies need to provide affordable, meaningful products that have smaller environmental footprints and consumers need to incorporate changes to their habits and buying choices.
Fortunately, we are seeing a demand for sustainable products. Nearly 60 per cent of consumers surveyed by IBM and the National Retail Federation this year said they were willing to change their shopping habits to reduce environmental impact. The same survey also found that the importance of brand purpose now surpasses cost and convenience for shoppers. Consumers are continuing to prioritise products and companies that are more sustainable, transparent and aligned with their personal values. Now, companies must respond to the call.
Committing to sustainable practices and contributing to the circular economy must be more than a priority for companies – it needs to be a central part of every company’s core business strategy. Colgate is driven by our sustainability mission to create a healthier, more sustainable future for all – and we are dedicated to implementing sustainable practices that resonate with stakeholders. If all companies commit to finding innovative ways to make their businesses – and therefore the world – more sustainable, together we can ensure our future is one worth smiling about.
For more information about these initiatives, explore Colgate’s 2025 Sustainability & Social Impact Strategy here.
by Ann Tracy, Chief Sustainability Officer, Colgate-Palmolive Company
Linking education and business with the Knowledge Triangle
Linking education and business with the Knowledge Triangle
The Knowledge Triangle, an EU initiative, aims to foster interaction between education, research and innovation, thereby creating the conditions for increased relevance and utilisation of universities’ activities. In other words, how the programmes of higher educational institutions can be linked more closely to the needs of the market.
One of the projects resulting from this initiative in supply chain management is Framelog. The Framelog project links the knowledge triangle of higher education, business and research for the systematic analysis and development of supply chain and logistics learning programmes. A county’s economic performance is influenced by its overall logistics performance, which in turn is affected by the quality of its workforce at all levels. With the increasing recognition of the importance of the supply chain and an acknowledged shortage of skilled personnel, it is clear that a co-ordinated and collaborative approach to education has to be adopted in order to build the relevant skills and competencies required by employers.
Several tools resulted from this project. For example, a compendium of good practice that can be used as an inspiration for companies as well as universities to enhance collaboration. Next to this compendium a self-assessment has been developed where the organisation gets a view on the level of their involvement in the knowledge triangle. Together with the guidelines for implementation, these tools can facilitate a better collaboration between the industry, education and research. Using the network of the European Logistics Association (ELA), these outputs were evaluated and valued by stakeholders from 13 countries. These tools can be found in the project results of the project at www.framelog.eu.
ELA, with the tools from the Framelog project, has already developed standards of competences and accredits university programmes using these standards. Bringing the programmes of the universities closer to the needs of the industry from a supply chain perspective and in conjunction with the tools from the Framelog project ,we are one step closer to achieve the general aim of the association: empowering supply chain management.
Anyone can check their own knowledge and competences on a free-to-use self-assessment tool based on the ELA standards of competence. Just give it a try at elalog.net.
by Nicole Geerkens, Executive Director, European Logistics Association
Brexit trade problems: what’s gone wrong and can it be fixed?
Brexit trade problems: what’s gone wrong and can it be fixed?
Queues of lorries at borders and empty supermarket shelves confirm what most already knew: the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) has increased trade barriers between the EU and the UK.
So what problems are arising, and can anything be done to improve them?
1. Rules of origin
Upon announcing the deal on Christmas Eve, Boris Johnson claimed it would “enable UK goods to be sold without tariffs, without quotas in the EU market”. This has since been proven to be misleading.
Goods traded between the EU and UK avoid tariffs and quotas only where they originate from whichever side exported them. This is governed by the rules of origin, which aim to ensure that goods imported from, say, India into the UK can’t be sold on to the EU tariff-free.
Complying with these rules is notoriously difficult – especially for processed agricultural or industrial goods, which typically include components from around the world. Different products are also subject to different minimum percentages, while some processes incur exclusions while others do not. In some sectors, such as automotive, compliance has already led to increased consumer prices.
The difficulty is heightened by the highly integrated nature of UK-EU supply chains and distribution networks. One perverse consequence is that EU goods sold into the UK tariff-free are subject to tariffs if re-exported to the EU – unless they have undergone sufficient processing in the UK. This is particularly a problem for the island of Ireland, for whom the UK has long acted as a land bridge for EU products. For many UK-EU traders, accepting tariffs may be easier than trying to comply.
2. Customs hold-ups
The prime mister has also incorrectly claimed that the TCA removed all non-tariff barriers to trade with the EU. Like most free-trade agreements, the TCA does little to address regulatory barriers to trade. As the UK and the EU are no longer in a customs union, for example, customs checks and formalities now apply, which can be time-consuming and burdensome.
Notably, seafood exporters have been struggling to handle the mountain of customs paperwork needed to ship produce to the EU. Customs bureaucracy has also caused freight forwarders to reject contracts for delivery of goods into the UK.
3. Services
Services represent over 80% of the UK economy, and the EU is the UK’s largest services export and import market. Yet the TCA does very little for services beyond including standard market access and the non-discrimination obligations that are typical of modern EU free-trade agreements. This is largely because the major trade barriers in services are not tariffs but regulations.
The EU internal market in services is imperfect but still easily the most successful example of cross-border services market integration. National restrictions persist on member states offering services across borders or setting up offices in other member states, but must be applied in a proportionate manner by reference to legitimate public interest objectives.
Other rules also massively assist services trade between EU members, including mutual recognition of professional qualifications, and sector-specific legislation such as for legal professions and financial services.
The TCA replicates none of this. UK nationals no longer enjoy mutual recognition of professional qualifications, for instance. UK financial services providers must now seek prior authorisation from relevant authorities in EU member states.
Even before Brexit, UK financial institutions had started taking steps to move some operations back to cities such as Paris, Dublin and Amsterdam. This process has since continued.
4. Level play
The “level playing provisions” in the TCA aim to satisfy EU concerns that the UK could use its regulatory and policy autonomy to gain a competitive advantage in trade or attract investment. The provisions go further than typical EU free-trade agreements and could curb the regulatory autonomy of both parties. It remains to be seen whether they will be used and, if so, how TCA arbitrators will interpret them.
5. Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland’s trading relationship with the EU was settled before the TCA by the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland in the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement. It means that Northern Ireland remains subject to EU customs law and huge swathes of EU law on trade in goods.
Designed to avoid checks at the Irish border, the new trade barriers with the rest of the UK are becoming increasingly apparent, with supermarket shelves empty in Northern Ireland because British suppliers are being held up by customs bureaucracy. In the long term, Northern Ireland may have to rely less on Great Britain and strengthen supply chains and distribution networks with Ireland.
What can be done
The TCA provides the framework for UK-EU trade, but aspects such as financial services recognition and data transfers are to be developed separately. Talks on financial services have begun.
The TCA itself will not stand still. Commitments will be tested, defined and clarified through dispute settlement. The TCA also created numerous specialised committees to oversee implementation and explore improvements. The parties could explore relaxing the rules of origin, for example.
Agreements on mutually recognising each side’s conformity-assessment procedures - where the EU would recognise the power of UK bodies to assess the conformity of specific UK goods with EU regulations and vice versa - would reduce some of the burden of regulatory compliance checks on goods. This could help both UK-EU trade, and trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. An expansion of sectors that can benefit from visa-free EU travel would also be welcomed, not least by the creative sector.
But there are limits to what can be realistically achieved. The limited ambition of the TCA in addressing trade barriers between the EU and the UK should not come as a surprise. It is a direct consequence of political decisions made by the UK and the EU. Unless priorities change, these barriers are here to stay.
Billy Melo Araujo, Lecturer in EU and International Economic Law, Queen's University Belfast
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.