Impacts of EU Technical Barriers to Trade upon Export of Chinese Agricultural Products and Countermeasures

Abstract

Over the past few years, technical barriers to trade have been applied by EU countries for trade protection owing to their flexibility, variability, privacy and great variety. In China, export of agricultural products to Europe has been deeply impacted as well. After current situation that China’s export of agricultural products to EU is blocked, impacts of EU’s technical barriers to trade upon Chinese agricultural products are illustrated and constructive suggestions are thus put forward, so that China’s agricultural products may better respond to these barriers and their competitiveness in EU market may be enhanced. 1.Introduction Use italic for emphasizing a word or phrase. Do not use boldface typing or capital letters except for section headings (cf. remarks on section headings, below). Although EU countries are major importers of Chinese agricultural products, China’s export of such products to EU has tended to decline in these years, which shall be mainly attributed to impacts of technical barriers to trade. To protect their own industries, many EU countries hinder international trade from being conducted with trade barriers. Being highly secret, technical barriers to trade may be flexibly utilized, so they are often employed by EU countries for trade protection[1]. With the availability of a complete set of technical standard system, EU has initially developed a range of technical standards by its own technical advantages. These technical standards and regulations may be modified according to situation of different countries, so they are changeable and make it more difficult for Chinese exporters of agricultural products to respond to them. As a result, relatively great impacts are imposed on China’s export of agricultural products by aforementioned trade barriers[4]. 2. Current Export of Chinese Agricultural Products to EU 2.1. Scale of Export of Chinese Agricultural Products to EU In recent years, China’s export of agricultural products to EU has been growing at an increasingly lower rate, which shall be mostly ascribed to the fact that EU has adopted a range of policies about technical barriers to trade[2]. As shown in Fig 1 as follows, total export of Chinese agricultural products tended to increase, from 38.217 billion US dollars in 2009 to 71.84 billion US dollars in 2014[3]. Nevertheless, increased export of agricultural products to EU was evidently lower than increased total export of Chinese agricultural products. Concerning export of Chinese agricultural exports, the ratio of the export to EU had been declining. From Fig 2, it may be apparently observed that China’s export accounted for 15.6% and 14.05% respectively, but drastically declined to 8.5% in 2014. It even fell more dramatically in the past year, which was closely associated with EU technical barriers to trade. 2.2. Main Chinese Agricultural Products Exported to EU Aquatic products, vegetable, fruits, plant and animal raw materials are major products exported from China to Europe, generally accounting for about 75% of all agricultural products exported to 2015 International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2015) © 2015. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 27 Europe.[5] As shown in Fig 3, vegetable and fruits occupied the highest proportion (about 27%) of all agricultural products exported to Europe, whereas it has gradually declined over the past years. Aquatic products, ranked top 2, accounted for 26%, which didn’t differ much from those of vegetables and fruits, while nearly 15% was occupied by plant and animal raw materials.