Fair Trade Advocacy Office

The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) recognises the progress enabled by the EUs 2014/24 Directive in promoting strategic public procurement for social and environmental objectives. However, its effectiveness remains limited, and further action is needed to ensure public authorities procure wisely, enhance Small and Medium Entreprises (SMEs) access, support fair supply chains and drive greater social and…

The revision of the EU public procurement directives is a key opportunity to align public spending with Europes commitments to human rights and responsible supply chains. Public authorities in the EU spend around 2 trillion per year (13.6% of GDP), yet less than 15% of above-threshold contracts currently qualify as green. And social criteria are used even less.

The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) welcomes the European Commission's proposal to simplify the EU Organic Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2018/848), as set out in COM/2025/780. The proposed amendments represent a meaningful step toward reducing the administrative burden on smallholder organic farmers and groups of operators, including those in Fair Trade supply chains.

The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) welcomes the Commissions initiative to simplify Regulation (EU) 2018/848 and related acts to ease implementation for organic producers. The EU organic sector sustains high-standard trade with third countries, with EU organic exports worth ~11 billion in 2023 and over 1,000,000 tonnes of tropical fruit, coffee, tea, cocoa and spices imported the same year.

The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) welcomes the Commission's initiative to establish the technical architecture for the Digital Product Passport (DPP) registry under Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 (ESPR). The registry will form the operational backbone through which product sustainability data flows across global supply chains.

The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) welcomes the European Commissions efforts to strengthen the position of farmers in the agri-food supply chain. It acknowledges the proposal to set the conditions under which the terms fair, equitable and equivalents may be used; as doing so might promote a fair remuneration for farmers by preventing misleading claims.

The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) speaks on behalf of the International Fair Trade movement, which includes over 2 million farmers in 68 countries, and over 300 Fair Trade enterprises. The FTAO welcomes the review of Directive (EU) 2019/633 on unfair trading practices (UTP Directive). The Directive has proven to be an important step toward addressing power imbalances in the food supply chain.

Human rights violations take place in the garment sector on a great scale[1]: One of the contributing factors to this is a lack of transparency. Consumers that want to make an informed choice and buy sustainable products have difficulty finding the right information. Workers that want to address problems dont know who the buyer is and cannot reach them.

We welcome the European Commission's Omnibus initiative to simplify the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), especially the attention given to easing requirements for EU organic farmers. However, we urge the Commission to extend these efforts to the EU Organic Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2018/848), which heavily affects smallholder farmers in non-EU countries supplying organic products to the EU.

The FTAO welcomes the European Commissions proposal to boost cross-border enforcement of the EU Directive on unfair trading practices in the agricultural and food supply chain via a regulation that shall complement the Directive in question. However, the FTAO is dismayed to see that a measure established to facilitate cross-border complaints makes no reference to complaints from suppliers outside the EU.

The Fair Trade Movement (830+ Fairtrade organic producer groups worldwide, ~800,000 smallholder and 50,000+ worker families) comments on the draft Implementing Regulation listing high-risk organic/in-conversion products from third countries and their control rates (Art. 8 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/1698). Reg.