The European Union said Wednesday that it will embark on an effort to restrict agricultural imports of products that do not align with domestic rules around pesticide and animal welfare.
In a document outlining its vision for the future of the bloc’s agriculture sector, the European Commission said it would pursue “stronger alignment” of production standards between imports and domestically produced agriculture products.
“The Commission will establish a principle that the most hazardous pesticides banned in the EU for health and environmental reasons are not allowed back to the EU through imported products,” the document reads.
As part of this effort, the Commission said it will undertake an impact assessment this year to consider how international misalignment on pesticide bans is hurting EU farmers’ competitiveness, as well as possible remedies and any necessary legal adjustments. The Commission, however, pledged to ensure its efforts would not run afoul of international trade rules.
Similarly, the document also previewed forthcoming legislation that would apply domestic animal welfare standards to imported products. Under the EU’s “Farm to Fork Strategy” adopted in 2020, the Commission has been examining existing animal welfare legislation to ensure it is in line with the latest scientific evidence. This review, the document said, could serve as a vehicle to consider future import measures.
“[T]he Union will ensure domestically that ambitious EU standards do not lead to economic, environmental and social leakages, and that the European agri-food sector is not put at a competitive disadvantage without corresponding reciprocity,” the document reads.
Rosalind Leeck, executive director for market access and strategy at the U.S. Soybean Export Council, told Agri-Pulse that the “mirror clause” on pesticides, if enacted, could have repercussions for U.S. soybean producers.
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“Europe is a great market for the U.S.,” Leeck said. “We have a lot more in common than we have in opposition. So, our hope is that we would be able to find common ground in these discussions.”
EU countries receive about 11% of all U.S. soybean shipments.
A 2019 study found that the U.S. permits the use of 72 pesticides that have been banned or phased out in the EU. Paraquat, for example, is a widely used weed killer often distributed under the name Gramoxone. The chemical has been linked to Parkinson’s disease and brain damage and was banned in the EU in 2007, with Brazil, China and Peru among the other countries to issue bans.
“In the U.S., we tend to measure more on just the risk and have a proportionate response to it. In the EU, that's more of the precautionary principle in the hazard criteria,” Leeck said.
While the EU has stressed it would ensure any measure is compliant with WTO rules, Leeck said that a mirror clause on pesticides could run afoul of international trade commitments.
“Certainly to just categorically apply mirror caluses would be in violation of WTO [sanitary and phytosanitary] agreement on pesticides,” she said. But she added that she was encouraged that the document calls for an impact assessment before any measures are adopted.
John Clarke, a former head of the EU delegation to the WTO, also challenged the notion that the EU could introduce mirror clauses on agriculture imports in a Substack post this week.
“[Y]ou cannot ban a product simply because the way it is produced is not identical to the way it is produced in the EU,” Clarke wrote. “The WTO Agreement, which the EU claims to believe in, is clear on this. And for very a good reason. Banning goods simply because they are made in a different way leads rapidly to protectionism.”
There are also significant diversions between the U.S. and EU on animal welfare regulations that could pose issues for U.S. producers. EU directives, for example, require laying hens to have access to a nest, perching space, and litter to allow pecking and scratching.
The EU is not a major importer of U.S. meat, eggs and dairy, but U.S. beef exporters have some footprint there. In 2024, the U.S. exported almost 13,000 tons of beef, making up around 4% of the EU’s total beef imports, according to the European Commission; U.S. exports of poultry, eggs, pork and dairy made up less than 2% of the overall EU imports.
Erin Borror, vice president of economic analysis at the U.S. Meat Export Federation, told Agri-Pulse in an email that the document is only the latest move as part of a wider EU effort to incorporate more “mirror clauses” into its trading relationships.
The push, she said, is “essentially imposing the EU’s prescriptive requirements on its trading partners, with disregard for risk-based and outcome-based regulations.” She cited Article 118 that requires operators exporting to the EU to avoid using antimicrobial medicinal products to spur growth or increase yields.
“The U.S. has regulations on antimicrobial use and efforts to address antimicrobial resistance, but these regulations are not recognized by the EU,” she lamented.
While the document published Wednesday does not commit the commission to any specific policies, nor does it introduce any legislation, but it provides a direction of travel for future policymaking.
Elsewhere in the document, for example, the European Commission outlined a new mechanism it plans to develop in 2025 to support domestic producers in the face of unfair practices that target the EU’s agricultural sector. The “Union Safety Net,” as it will be called, will “protect the agri-food sector through all available means,” the document reads, and will complement the bloc’s Anti-Coercion Instrument. The instrument came into force in 2023 and allows the EU to adopt countermeasures, including tariffs or import quotas, if the commission determines a foreign government is engaging in economic coercion.
The EU commissioner for trade and economic security, Maroš Šefčovič, suggested in comments in Washington on Wednesday that the anti-coercion instrument could feature as part of the Commission’s retaliatory plans in the event the Trump administration presses ahead with plans to restore and hike tariffs on steel and aluminum and impose a “reciprocal” tariff.
In addition to protecting EU agriculture from certain imports, the vision also includes an EU effort to boost domestic production of proteins and fertilizer and improve trade resiliency by broadening existing trade relationships.
