Altromercato

E' quasi tempo di chiusura della settimana del commercio equo in Gran Bretagna. In quel paese il 2007 è stato decisamente l'anno dei prodotti certificati Fairtrade (meno quello delle organizzazioni di commercio equo...). Il volume delle vendite di prodotti certificati Fairtrade ha infatti raggiunto quasi i 500 milioni di sterline (circa 650 milioni di Euro). In Italia le vendite sono state solo poco più di 100 milioni di Euro.

La grande differenza, oltre ai volumi mossi, è data dal modello: grandi organizzazioni profit che certificano linee prodotti attraverso Fairtrade UK in Gran Bretagna, organizzazioni non profit come Ctm altromercato ancora prevalenti in Italia (anche se le nuove linee di prodotti certficati da Auchan, Lidl, Dico) fanno presumere a breve un sorpasso dei prodotti certificati.

Non è detto che i due approcci siano antitetici, anzi. Entrambi hanno vantaggi e svantaggi evidenti.

Come in Italia si dibatte sul ruolo delle centrali di importazione e delle botteghe allo stesso tempo in Gran Bretagna si parla di dove sta andando il commercio equo e solidale in mano alle grandi multinazionali. Ecco un esempio di un articolo apparso su un quotidiano nazionale (The Guardian). Ritorneremo sull'argomento.

Unfair trade status

Alex Singleton

It's currently Fairtrade Fortnight, and each year the organisers announce at least one major win for its ethical trading scheme. This year's big announcement is that all retail sugar sold by Tate & Lyle will become Fairtrade-Foundation certified. The decision has been widely welcomed. But having researched how the sugar market works, I'm left dumbfounded.

Tate & Lyle may be able to buy an ethical halo, but that does not stop its profits and market dominance benefiting rather heavily from unfair trade rules. According to farmsubsidy.org, it is Britain's biggest beneficiary of agricultural subsidies, raking in nearly €200m a year of taxpayers' money. "There is clearly something wrong," says Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, "when families and pensioners are paying taxes so that huge firms like Tate & Lyle can be subsidised."

Distorting trade rules are forcing consumers to pay higher prices in the supermarkets, too. Tate & Lyle's producers receive tariff-free access into EU markets through the so-called "Everything but arms" agreement, but lower-cost producers like Brazil and Thailand face duties of €33.90 per 100kg of cane sugar imported.

That massively restricts competition, and it stops producers in emerging countries from climbing up the economic ladder by supplying refined, packaged and branded products in UK supermarkets. Labour MP Doug Henderson has been particularly critical of the current "duopoly" enjoyed by Tate & Lyle and British Sugar. In a House of Commons speech, he criticised these companies' stranglehold, pointing out that they had already "been fined by the European Union on a number of occasions for anti-competitive price-fixing policies."

Since EU regulators seem ineffective at introducing competition, what can be done? Ironically, this is one of those areas where Fairtrade could have played a useful role. It could have highlighted the injustice of all the corporate welfare and protection given to Tate & Lyle, by giving its mark to excluded producers and by campaigning against sugar subsidies. But in its quest to "scale up" the idea of fair trade, it seems willing to accept dominant players without fully thinking through the consequences.

Giving fair trade status to a company that so massively benefits from unfair trade rules is perhaps not surprising. "Time and time again," says Marc Sidwell of the Adam Smith Institute, "the scheme claims to promote fairness while making excluded producers even worse off."

Certification schemes can be an important help for consumers. They help us make informed choices in the supermarket. But for those schemes to remain relevant, they have to be true to their claims. At a time when the fair trade scheme is coming under increasing scrutiny, it seems to me that Fairtrade is failing to provide a meaningful standard of fairness. Certainly some Thai and Brazilian producers will find the scheme's conception of fair trade sugar leaves a very bitter aftertaste.