Pakistan was finally able to submit a formal application to the European Commission on 15th March, 2013 to grant Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) Plus to the country which would allow entry of Pakistani products duty-free in the 27-member EU bloc. According to the spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, their team had to work hard to complete the application in consultation with the trade minister in Brussels, besides holding a number of meetings with other stakeholders regarding the compliance of 27 Conventions signed with the international community.
It is expected that the process would take up to six months in the Commission and if the conditions were met, the Commission could make a proposal to grant GSP Plus status. After this, the Council and the European Parliament would have two months (extendable by another two) to object. A qualified majority of member states or a simple majority in the European Parliament could block the proposal. The successful states will be named by the end of 2013 and the GSP Plus will become operational for new countries from January 1, 2014. As per the criteria of EU's GSP Plus from 2014 onwards, the applicant country must meet international conventions, its GSP exports must not be more than 2 percent of EU's global GSP imports (previously 1 percent) and it should not have been declared as middle or high middle income country by the World Bank.
If Pakistan is granted GSP Plus status from 2014 onwards, bulk of its products would have duty-free access to European Union and it is expected that the rate of export growth to EU member states would increase significantly. However, the worrying aspect for Pakistan is that countries wanting to benefit from the scheme, besides certain other conditions, are also required to ratify and give binding commitments to effectively implement 27 international conventions on human rights, political rights, labour rights, environment, narcotics control and good governance. Authorities believe that all the required conventions have been ratified by Pakistan with reservations except Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), with no reservations. However, there is some difference of opinion on the issue. Some analysts are of the view that there would be no problem so far as ratification was concerned while questions could be raised about the implementation of conventions. In particular, requirement that "Conventions are to be ratified without reservations of a nature which are prohibited by any of the conventions or which are construed to be incompatible with the objective and purpose of that convention" could be interpreted differently by different parties and thus pose a problem to Pakistan.
Whatever the odds, it is good to see that Pakistan has made the first move to qualify for GSP Plus status. Now, the country has to work very hard to back its case as the EU would not automatically grant the requested facility and Islamabad would have to argue its case convincingly at technical, political and diplomatic levels. Besides the Commission, Council and the European Parliament plus the monitoring teams formed for the purpose have to be satisfied of the meeting of necessary requirements. Some of the conditions like human and political rights including that of minorities and good governance would be specially difficult for Pakistan to meet. The conventions in the relevant fields would not only have to be ratified but actually implemented and verified at appropriate levels. A major concern is that if Pakistan is not accorded the GSP Plus status while some of the other developing countries qualify for the facility, Pakistan would find itself in a disadvantageous position. This would be highly unfortunate for the country, especially at a time when our balance of payments (BoP) position is already under a great deal of stress. Undoubtedly, the stakes are too high and Pakistan cannot afford to lose this opportunity of having a competitive edge in the EU market. We are pretty certain that relevant authorities of the country are aware of the importance of the issue and would be making necessary efforts to ensure that Pakistan is added to the list of qualifying countries when GSP Plus becomes operational in the beginning of 2014.