Rice, import restrictions without tariffs fail. Producers: 4 billion at risk
After the EU Commission's vote, the import of zero-tariffs rice from Cambodia and Myanmar remains at 565,000 tonnes, almost three times as much as the producers wanted. Only the glimmer of a plenary vote remains
No luck. Despite the appeal of the Italian rice industry and other producer countries of the 27 to MEPs to limit subsidised imports, the Environment Committee of the European Parliament approved the regulation on the reform of the so-called Generalised System of Preferences, the EU's tariff concessions to least-developed countries under the everything but arms agreement, leaving the quota for the import of rice at zero tariffs unchanged at 565,000 tonnes compared to the Commission's proposal.
Almost three times more than the demand of 200,000 tonnes indicated by producers as the maximum threshold to protect a sector that is already in great difficulty due to the world economic situation and the climate crisis that is severely straining cultivation especially in Italy, by far the leading European producer with over 55% of the total followed by a small number of countries, a circumstance that unfortunately makes it more difficult to defend the sector in Brussels.
The countries benefiting from the agreement include Cambodia and Myanmar, major producers and exporters to the EU with over 500 thousand tonnes, almost a third of total European imports of 1.6 million tonnes (out of a consumption of 2.6). Imports largely and increasingly consist of ready-made and packaged rice, sold at unsustainable prices by European standards.
The problem is therefore not only the volumes on which imports have settled, which are also huge since the safeguard clause, laboriously activated thanks to the work of the Italian supply chain in 2019 for three years and then suspended again, was abolished. The concern of the rice world concerns the values of the processed product - not to mention social and environmental standards - which are lower than those at which European farmers would like to sell the raw material.
Moreover, unlike in Italy, in Europe rice is considered a commodity and not a niche product, so the risk is thatthe large European retailers (first, and perhaps later in Italy as well) will lower the quality of their purchases, in a vicious circle that leads to lower prices and higher imports, thus putting the European industry out of business in the long (but not too long) term, replaced by importers.
