The updated rules revise the EU’s generalised scheme of tariff preferences (GSP), which allows vulnerable developing countries to export goods to the EU with low or no tariffs. Co-legislators added several international human rights and environmental conventions to the list of international treaties that participating countries must ratify to benefit from trade preferences. These include the Paris Agreement, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Migrant readmission conditionality

MEPs negotiated a series of stricter criteria that will need to be fulfilled before GSP countries see their preferential tariffs withdrawn for continued non-cooperation in the readmission of irregular migrants, as proposed by the Commission with the “readmission conditionality”. These criteria include a longer evaluation procedure and mandatory engagement of at least 12 months with the countries concerned. Parliament’s…