Fair trade in the European Union

The aim of this chapter is to establish the current regulatory and institutional framework for fair trade in the European Union (EU), ¹ both in some of its Member States (Part I) and at the level of the EU itself (Part II). Enquiring into how fair trade products are marketed, regulated, and indeed promoted in the EU is of interest from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. As we saw in Chapter 4, key stages in the development of the international fair trade movement throughout the 1970s to 1990s occurred on EU territory, and particularly in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and the majority of EU Member States have presently well-consolidated fair trade structures. In addition, and plausibly as a consequence, the EU (taken as a single customs territory) has long been the biggest market for fair trade products and reaffirmed its position in 2009, being the sales destination of 49 per cent of fair trade products (including both labelled and non-labelled products) from Latin America, 48 per cent of fair trade products from Asia, and 23 per cent of fair trade products from Africa (DAWS, 2011: 55). ² According to the Fairtrade International (FLO)’s 2009–2010 annual report, the aggregate retail value of Fairtrade-certified products sold in the EU reached €2.06 billion, representing 60 per cent of global Fairtrade sales (€3.4 billion) in 2009 (FLO, 2010: 12).