MALAYSIA MULLS ELEVATING EU'S DELEGATED ACT ISSUE TO WTO

KUALA LUMPUR, April 24 (Bernama) -- Malaysia is considering to elevate the issue of the European Commission's delegated act to implement the European Union Renewable Energy Directive (EU RED II) for 2021-2030 to the dispute settlement mechanism under the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

In a statement today, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) said the European Commission had recently adopted the delegated act, which has a strict requirement against crops for feedstock biofuels which cause deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to indirect land use change (ILUC).

It said the delegated act included palm oil in the ‘high ILUC-risk’ category, whereby crops under this category would be phased out by 2030, which is clearly a form of disguised restriction on international trade and protectionist measure against the crop.

“Malaysia will continue to actively and consistently engage with other palm oil producing countries in coming up with more concerted efforts to raise our rejection before the various committees under the WTO.

“Multilateral pressure on the EU will be intensified as we move forward as many viewed that this latest development could be violations to the WTO rules,” the ministry said.

Meanwhile, during the Council of Trade in Goods (CTG) Meeting on April 12, MITI said Malaysia highlighted that the adopted delegated regulation has significant negative implication towards oil palm industry development globally.

Furthermore, it said scientific evidence had proven that oil palm is the most productive oil-bearing crop as compared with other annual oil crops, whereby a single hectare of cultivated oil palm land is able to supply between five to ten times more oil compared to rapeseed and soybean respectively.

“Malaysian palm oil is produced in a sustainable manner and the oil palm industry is committed to producing palm oil in accordance with sustainable principles and criteria under the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) certification scheme.

“As such, Malaysia urges the EU to accept and recognise the MSPO certification scheme as one of the voluntary schemes under the Directive for the certification of low ILUC risk biofuels and bioliquids,” MITI added.

-- BERNAMA