With the liberalisation of agri-food trade, standards and regulations that specify the requirements for imported products to be sold on domestic markets have become increasingly important. These constitute non-tariff measures (NTMs). Those measures aimed at ensuring food safety and plant and animal health are the focus of the EU FP7 project ‘NTM impact’. Working closely with the project partners, LEI, part of Wageningen UR, has taken the lead in the comparative analysis and data collection.
The overall aim of the NTM project is to collect and analyze new data on the requirements that exporters must meet. While taking the EU exporters’ perspective, the project compares requirements across agri-food products and ten trading partner countries and analyses their impact on trade flows. In the comparative analysis, an index of regulatory heterogeneity will be constructed in order to highlight differences and similarities. Regulatory heterogeneity between exporting and importing countries implies increased costs for exporters.
The framework necessary for the systematic comparison and subsequent analysis has been developed, and the data collection is currently under way.
The NTM Impact Working Paper from LEI researchers Marie Luise Rau and Karl Shutes and Simon Schlueter (University of Bonn) Index of Regulatory Heterogeneity in International Agri-Food Trade is available now. Working papers are the products of ongoing research activities conducted by the 19 partner teams.
Working Paper
More information about the project