Agricultural markets and international trade in the context of sustainability objectives

Call Updates

Dec 16, 2020 11:26:12 AM

Call for proposals: H2020 – Rural Renaissance (H2020-RUR-2020-2, second stage)

The Commission and the Research Executive Agency have now completed the evaluation of the proposals submitted to the above-mentioned call and informed the applicants on 15 December 2020.

An overview of the evaluation results ('flash call info') is now available in the section "Additional documents" of the "Topic conditions and documents" tab of the correspondent topic page:

· RUR-21-2020: Agricultural markets and international trade in the context of sustainability objectives

The grant agreements are expected to be signed by May 2021.

Sep 15, 2020 2:03:06 PM

The H2020-RUR-2020-2 call for second-stage was closed on the 8th of September 2020. 12 proposals have been submitted in response to this call. The breakdown per topic is indicated below:

· RUR-21-2020: 3

The evaluation results are expected to be communicated to the applicants in December 2020.

Sep 15, 2020 2:03:06 PM

The H2020-RUR-2020-2 call for second-stage was closed on the 8th of September 2020. 12 proposals have been submitted in response to this call. The breakdown per topic is indicated below:

RUR-21-2020: 3

The evaluation results are expected to be communicated to the applicants in December 2020.

May 6, 2020 2:38:42 PM

The generalised feedback, resulting after the 1st stage evaluation of this topic, is published on this page. To download the document, just expand the "Topic conditions and documents" area (i.e. click on '+ More'), scroll down until "Additional documents" and the generalised feedback can be downloaded in pdf.

Apr 22, 2020 3:59:50 PM

The Research Executive Agency (REA) has now completed the evaluation of the proposals submitted to the H2020- RUR-2020-2 first stage call. The following overall thresholds were applied:

· RUR-21-2020 Agricultural international Trade in the context of the sustainability objectives 9.5

The results of the evaluation are as follows:

· RUR-21-2020 - RIA: 9 submitted proposals. 3 proposal is above threshold

We recently informed the applicants about the evaluation results for their proposals. The Generalised feedback will be published around beginning of May 2020 on the topic page under "Topic conditions and documents" section.
It is expected that the first grant agreements will be signed around April 2021.

Jan 29, 2020 4:24:14 PM

The H2020-RUR-2020-2 call was closed on the 23rd of January 2020. 46 proposals have been submitted in response to this call. The breakdown per topic is indicated below:

RUR-21-2020: 9

The evaluation results are expected to be communicated to the applicants in April 2020.

Oct 15, 2019 3:16:00 PM

The submission session is now available for: RUR-21-2020(RIA)

Agricultural markets and international trade in the context of sustainability objectives

ID: RUR-21-2020

Type of action: RIA Research and Innovation action

Deadline Model : two-stage

Planned opening date: 15 October 2019

Deadline: 22 January 2020 17:00:00 Brussels time

2nd stage Deadline: 08 September 2020 17:00:00 Brussels time

Horizon 2020

Work programme: Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research and the bioeconomy
Work programme year: H2020-2018-2020
Call name: Rural Renaissance

Call ID: H2020-RUR-2018-2020

Specific Challenge:

The EU remains a staunch supporter of the multilateral trading system. In spite of its successes, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is now facing new challenges in light of a rapidly changing world. The WTO can be further modernised, by making its trade agenda closer to citizens and ensuring that trade contributes to the pursuit of broader objectives set by the global community, in particular with regard to sustainability[1]. There are strong, complex and crucial links between trade, financial, economic and social policies, and these also reflect in agriculture. As one of the sectors with the lowest income worldwide, average farm income in the EU28 is only around 40% of average overall income[2]. In Africa, rural areas remain much poorer, although the urban-rural gap has narrowed[3]. The profile of the global poor shows they are predominantly rural, young, poorly educated, and mostly employed in agriculture[4]. Competition on world markets is considered by some to be the cause of poverty as it drives prices down on some sensitive commodity markets. The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agreed in the framework of Agenda 2030 in 2015 set out a detailed set of actions to be pursued, many of them with strong links to trade. Of particular relevance to agriculture are SDG1 "No poverty" and the closely related SDG2 "Zero Hunger" and SDG3 "Good Health and Well-being". Aspects linked to agricultural practices and standards are also included in several environmental-related SDGs: "Life on Land" (SDG 15), "Clean Water" (SDG 6) and "Climate Action" (SDG 13). Global commitments should prompt the adoption of measures attentive to the social and environmental impact of trade in agriculture. In a globalised food system[5], the impact of these measures in one part of the world may be offset by slower progress in other parts, which would benefit from lower costs and increased competitiveness in the meantime. Consequently, a detailed analysis of the SDG targets related to the agriculture sector, and the corresponding environmental issues, should be undertaken and options through which trade policy can contribute to achieving the SDGs should be identified.

Scope:Proposals will analyse and further develop robust methods and related indicators to assess the impacts (positive and negative) of agricultural international trade on the environment and society. It will include analysis of options through which trade policies can contribute to achieving the SDGs and implementing climate and biodiversity agreements while securing the achievement of EU objectives regarding a fair standard of living for farmers and poverty eradication, which remains the primary objective of development policy under the new European Consensus[6]. Work will look in particular to relevant supply chains in the agriculture sector involved both in import and export for the European Union in relation to its major agricultural trading partners. In addition, a contrasting analysis from the African continent perspective - the world’s poorest continent (Sub-Saharan Africa was hosting more than half the world’s poor in 2013) – could be proposed[7]. Environmental impacts as carbon leakage[8] and other concepts will be analysed regarding agricultural trade. Activities will build upon previous studies[9] including the work done on the impact of EU consumption on deforestation[10] and related to the target 6 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy (action 17b)[11] regarding the enhanced contribution of trade policy to conserving biodiversity, ecosystems and ecosystem services. Projects will design transition paths in order to develop trade relations in sustainable and fair ways and as “equals” (SOTEU2018) while considering the role that labour plays in overall production cost and the impact of the internalisation of environmental costs on the competitiveness of agricultural productions.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of 4 million EUR would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:More evidence-based policies and improved civil society dialogue building on improved data, analysis, and methods;
Improved coherence between EU policies (Agriculture, Environment, Trade, Climate, Food security, Development…);
Best practices and policies for multilateral trade contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals and global agreements on environmental and climate challenges.

Cross-cutting Priorities:

International cooperation
Socio-economic science and humanities

[1]http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2018/september/tradoc_157331.pdf

[2]Facts and figures on EU agriculture and the CAP, Statistical annex: Agricultural and farm income

[3]https://www.un.org/africarenewal/sites/www.un.org.africarenewal/files/Poverty%20in%20a%20Rising%20Africa%20Overview.pdf

[4]Poverty and shared prosperity 2016 – Taking on inequality – World Bank Group https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/25078/9781464809583.pdf

[5]Nearly one third of global arable land use is connected to international trade https://wad.jrc.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/atlas_pdf/2_WAD_GlobalPatternsOfHumanDomination.pdf

[6]https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/policies/european-development-policy/european-consensus-development_en

[7]In relation to the Task Force Rural Africa – strengthening our partnership in food and farming

[8]Carbon leakage refers to the situation that may occur if, for reasons of costs related to climate policies, businesses were to transfer production to other countries with laxer emission constraints. This could lead to an increase in their total emissions.

[9]https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/trade-analysis/impact-assessment_en

[10]http://ec.europa.eu/environment/forests/pdf/3.%20eport%20policies%20proposal.pdf

[11]https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52011DC0244&from=EN