Committee on International Trade Ordinary meeting
3 September 2026
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INTA European Parliament
Follow its sittings11:49 - 14:43
Speaker 4
So, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, let's start our third part of our inter-meeting of September. And we are starting with a legislation which was really controversial and heavy discussed here in the Parliament, in the Council and wherever, the GSP. As you know, we had the active GSP to prolong because we couldn't find a compromise on the renew of the GSP regulation. And therefore we have now also the report, the presentation by the Commission for the GSP covering the period from 2023 until 2025. And luckily we managed then to get an understanding about the revision of the GSP and the renew of the GSP.
You remember the question of readmission and the question of what was it? So, some agriculture goods. And at the end of the day we managed it. And I'm really happy that now on the 1st of January next year the new GSP regulation will come into force. And the DG Trade is also really busy to prepare the secondary legislation so that everything is fixed to the 1st of January.
And this will also mark the 25th anniversary of the Everything But Arms regulation. And this is for the European Union of course a landmark that we are a specific, reliable partner to the Global South. And therefore I'm happy that Dora Correia is now here with us, the acting Deputy Director General of DG Trade, and also Oronzo Console, Head of Division from the EEAS, and give us a hint about the situation in the last two years, specifically also regarding countries which are really, let's say, at the border between GSP, GSP+ and switching to a developed country. And one of them is Pakistan, of course. So, yeah, with this I will give Dora the floor.
Please.
14:43 - 22:21
Speaker 1
Thank you very much, Chairman Lange, and good morning to all. It's always a pleasure to be here in the INTA Committee today to present to you very briefly the report on the monitoring report on the GSP, which we have published jointly with the High Representative Vice-President in July. So it is a very much a joint effort, a joint effort with the EEAS. I'm very happy to have Renzo with me here today to present the report, but also involving a number of Commission services dealing with the sustainability aspects covered by the GSP, such as of course employment, climate, environment and of course our DG International Partnerships.
And this is very important to ensure a whole-of-government approach, to ensure that there is policy coherence and effectiveness across the board, as the purpose of the GSP is indeed to use our trade leverage to achieve sustainable development. One point I also want to underline in these brief introductory remarks is that the report also integrates the feedback we have received from civil society on numerous occasions, in particular in the dedicated civil society dialogue that we held on the report in June this year. A small reminder as well, of course, that the GSP scheme covers 65 developing countries, out of which 44 are least developed countries, so benefiting from the EBA. To give you an order of magnitude, this covers 3 billion people in the 65 beneficiaries and 1 billion people in the LDCs, in the 44 countries. And last but not least, the GSP scheme is also very much appreciated by our own businesses, our own industry, who very much supports the objectives of the GSP by investing in developing countries and integrating them in international supply chains.
So I will now go briefly into the content of the report and then focus also a little bit on the new regulation and the next steps towards the implementation of the new regulation, as mentioned by the chair, which will be entering into force at the beginning of 2027. So in terms of the contents of the monitoring report, the report demonstrates once again that the GSP remains a source of stability and predictability, which is particularly relevant in the current geopolitical volatility and trade disturbance. And the report also demonstrates that the benefits accruing from the GSP scheme accrue to our beneficiaries, but also to our importers and to our consumers through greater choice and lower prices. The whole GSP scheme across the three arrangements also delivers on its goal to incentivize sustainable development and good governance based on international agreed and recognized standards. In terms of trade flows, imports under the GSP scheme reached almost 60 billion euros in 2024.
And I can already anticipate that provisional data indicates that this has further increased last year in 2025 to 65 billion euros. This means that we are almost reaching or we've practically reached the figures of pre-COVID times in 2019. So this is indeed a very important element that shows that trade is consistently increasing. If we zoom in into the particular arrangements, looking at the EBA, so the arrangement covering the 44 LDCs, the preferential imports under the EBA arrangement represent half of these trade flows.
So we are now around 30 billion euros of EBA imports in 2024, which have also increased last year according to the provisional data to 33 billion euros. So this is another reason to celebrate this year in addition to the 25 years of the EBA regime as mentioned by the chair. Looking at GSP+ now, of course GSP+ has additional benefits but also additional obligations to our beneficiaries, but it has remained attractive. And indeed, if you look at the period between 2019 and 2025, so the six years, we note a 47% increase in imports under this scheme, under the GSP+ scheme, totaling now, according again to provisional data, 12.5 billion euros in imports in 2025. So it is important to note this consistent increase over the last years.
It's also important to note that the scheme as such is a very generous scheme and it compares favorably to other existing schemes. Just one figure to give you an idea of the benefits accruing from the scheme, we estimate that the preferences have brought about a benefit of 5 billion euros in tariff reductions in 2024 alone, and half of this, over half of this going to EBA countries. Of course these savings in terms of duties not paid accrue to the exporters in GSP beneficiaries, but also to the importers in the EU and of course to our consumers as well at the end of the line. Let me just also zoom in on Africa because, and the report also points that out, we foresee that going forward the number of beneficiaries from the scheme will be shifting to the African continent as a number of Asian beneficiaries graduate out of EBA. This is a particular issue to follow in going ahead because of course it will be, the GSP scheme will be an important part of asserting, I would say, EU influence and EU's role in the African continent.