Fair Trade Advocacy Office

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) 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 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.

This reply is made on behalf of the Fair Trade Advocacy Office which is an advocacy organisation of the Fair Trade Movement for Fair Trade and Trade Justice with the aim to improve the livelihoods of marginalised producers and workers in the Gobal South. We would like to emphasize that the most affected groups, especially rights holders throughout the entire value chain of CRM, are consulted.

This contribution is jointly submitted by the Fair Trade Advocacy Office, Fairtrade International, and the World Fair Trade Organization-Europe. Please find our full submission uploaded as a PDF. Summary of recommendations: 1. ESRS S1-9 (Adequate wages): Maintain the recommendation by EFRAG to align the definition with living wages as agreed by the ILO, to ensure coherence with the CSDDD. 2.

European Commission’s public consultation on the legislative proposal on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence The proposal is a milestone in corporate accountability. HREDD framework is a rightsholder centric instrument which should be clear in the directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (CSDD) while ensuring that all rightsholders’ interests are considered.

The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) speaks out on behalf of the Fair Trade Movement for Fair Trade and Trade Justice with the aim to improve the livelihoods of marginalised producers and workers in the Global South. Our members have been working for decades with small farmers, workers, and artisans to ensure fair trading practices, good working conditions and adequate remuneration.

The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) welcomes the opportunity to participate in this public consultation. The FTAO speaks out on behalf of the Fair Trade Movement for Fair Trade and Trade Justice with the aim to improve the livelihoods of marginalised producers and workers in the South.

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 speaks on behalf of the Fair Trade movement at EU level for trade and social justice. As a general note, the FTAO believes that the EC proposal to revise EU marketing standards on agrifood products has the potential to benefit Fair Trade and smallholder farmers in Europe and beyond.

Thanks for the opportunity to give input. The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) is a joint Fair Trade movement political advocacy initiative. Our goal is to make Fair Trade the norm in supply chains. More information> www.fair-trade.website and www.fairtrade-advocacy.org General remarks ● EU Consumers not only lack reliable and relevant information on the environmental performance of articles.

The FTAO welcomes the initiative to propose a Quality Jobs Act. We offer this input to contribute practical knowledge, in particular on human-rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD), to the Commissions priority areas.

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 very much welcome the European Commission’s initiative to tackle the deforestation issue, and the related unsustainable production and trade of forest risk commodities. With regards to the problem analysis, we agree that the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation are complex and multiple. We would like to highlight poverty as one of the major factors.

The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) welcomes the European Commissions legislation on Corporate Sustainability Reporting. We believe that this is an important step towards accountability, transparency and responsible business conduct. Both the garment sector and agricultural sector have a high risk of human rights violations and negative environmental impacts.

The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO), on behalf of the Fair Trade Movement, is focusing in this consultation response on recommendations for creating quality jobs in the textile and agricultural sectors. The creation of quality jobs in the textile sector aligns with the 2022 EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, which sets out that by 2030, textile products placed on the EU market shall be produced in…

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 Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) welcomes the beginning of the evaluation process of the Directive on against Unfair Trading Practices in the agri-food supply chain and looks forward to keep contributing to this evaluation process.

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.