To Bite Off More than One Can Chew? Climate-led Conditionality in the EU’s Generalised Scheme of Preferences Through the Lens of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change

Since its launch in 1971, the EU generalised scheme of preferences (GSP) has represented a landmark tool of the Union’s common commercial policy, aiming at heightening market access for developing and least developed countries through preferential tariff treatment conceded voluntarily, non-reciprocally and on a non-discriminatory basis. Over the decades, the EU GSP has evolved, from a measure apt at sustaining industrialisation in vulnerable third countries to an instrument fostering sustainable development beyond the Union’s borders. As such, the present GSP regulation, through its GSP+ arrangement, subordinates both the granting and temporary withdrawal of tariff preferences upon, inter alia, implementation of twenty-seven international conventions, also related to the environment. The regulation, however, is to be put to the test by the most pressing ecological issue of the present millennium, notably climate change. Accordingly, does the EU GSP regime provide for a form of climate-led conditionality, connected to the respect of the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change (PA)? The article first reconstructs the origins and structure of the EU GSP regime, with the aim of exploring to what extent both a positive and a negative climate-led conditionality can be envisaged thereof. Secondly, the analysis dwells on the 2021 Commission’s proposal for the revision of the GSP regulation, putting ahead the leeway of granting and temporarily withdrawing trade preferences upon respect of the Paris Agreement on climate change. Against this backdrop, the investigation ponders the systemic limitations of the proposal, whose operationalisation through the lens of the PA remains nebulous.