1. WFTO Europe at Home
2. Europe in a Nutshell
2.1 Upcoming EU Legislation – Are We Ready?
2.2 EU Elections – What’s Next?
3. WFTO Around the World
3.1 Mr Botta’s Commitment to Fair Trade in Kenya
3.2 Altromercato’s Laboratorio InnovAzione
4. News from the Region
4.1 Kickstart of WFTO-Europe’s Sector Specific Working Groups
5. News from the Board
5.1 Remeber to run for EU/Board Representative
5.2 Updating Contact Information
6. Opportunities
7. Agenda
7.1 Global Summit in Cape Town
1. WFTO Europe at Home
As we approach our AGM, it is worth taking a look back at our activities during 2023:
Working Groups: In 2023, WFTO-Europe presented the work done in 2022 by the Working Group on Northern Producers to WFTO Global. This contributed significantly to the on-going conversation on clarifying what types of local producers in Europe fit into the Guarantee System and which do not – something the membership in Europe is still asking for in order to effectively invite the Northern Producers that match the criteria into the WFTO family. Further, at the request of certain members, WFTO-Europe led an experience-sharing group of Worldshop Members. The aim of the group is to discuss and share initiatives on connecting with young people both as customers and as volunteers. The group will continue to meet around two times a year. If you are interested in knowing more or potentially joining this group, please reach out to WFTO-Europe’s coordinator, Mikkel Nørgård at coordination@wfto-europe.org.
Members Review 2022: The latest edition of the WFTO-Europe annual publication, the Members’ Review, highlighted a range of members and their special Fair Trade practices. The 2022 edition (published in June 2023) focused on Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD) in general, and on the EU’s Corporate Sustainable Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) in particular. This publication is meant to both promote WFTO-Europe’s position on HREDD in general and our advocacy work on the CSDDD, as well as showcasing several Fair Trade practices of our members that align with important elements of the CSDDD. Please read the full edition here.
Biennial Conference in Strasbourg: In June 2023 WFTO-Europe held its first Biennial Conference since the onset of the Covid pandemic. The conference was hosted by the member Les Jardins de Gaïa at their headquarters in Wittisheim just outside Strasbourg. Here, members engaged in conversations and workshops in Les Jardins de Gaïa’s tea house. The last day of the conference was dedicated to meetings with local Social and Solidarity Economy actors at a cooperative working space in Strasbourg and a meeting with MEPs in the European Parliament of Strasbourg. Here recommendations from the School Food for Change project that WFTO-Europe participates in were discussed, together with a proposal for an EU regulation on the definition of Fair Trade, which French MEP Claude Gruffat wanted to involve WFTO members in discussing.
Conclusion of the CREATE project: In October 2023 the Erasmus+ project, CREATE, with the aim to upskill migrant women in vulnerable situations and promote sustainable zero-waste fashion, came to a close. WFTO-Europe contributed with drafting educational material and with leading communication and dissemination efforts. The two key products of the project, the Educator’s Handbook and the Educational Toolkit, were finalized and published during 2023. The first collects knowledge from all five project partners on how to train and upskill people to create and bring to market a zero-waste capsule collection which boosts employability and expresses cultural characteristics. The second is a series of presentations and exercises for teaching the knowledge of the Handbook. Just before the conclusion of the project, WFTO-Europe hosted the other partners in the final, in-person meeting at our offices in Brussels.
Collaboration on EU law on Sustainable Food Systems: Following the conclusion of the FASS Food EU project in the end of 2022, an EC official of the Directorate General for Agriculture (DG-AGRI) who had joined the project’s final conference was interested in discussing the project’s policy recommendations further. After some initial meetings, the NGO FIAN-EU also contacted WFTO-Europe to collaborate on a report on how to integrate Human Rights into the EU’s Framework Law on Sustainable Food Systems (FSFS). This work was also shared during further meetings with DG-AGRI and DG-SANTE (Directorate General for health and food safety) and the collaboration with FIAN-EU culminated in an event at the European Parliament on 26th October promoting the key recommendations.
Work on the Corporate Sustainable Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD): Even before the proposal for a CSDDD by the EC in 2022, WFTO-Europe has been advocating its position on Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence and the need for EU legislation on this. But after the launch of the CSDDD proposal by the EC, WFTO-Europe joined forces with FTAO by accompanying and supporting their advocacy work. Now that the CSDDD finally has gone through all stages of approval and the transposition into national law of each Members State will soon begin, it is encouraging to reflect on the collective efforts of the movement and the hard work of the FTAO in particular. Although the Directive is quite watered down from the original proposal, important elements like Living Wages and responsible disengagement (i.e. a ban on cut-and-run practices seen during the height of the Covid pandemic) in the final version. The most important point is that this Directive firmly establishes a precedence for regulating companies on how their conduct impacts Human Rights and the environment. This opens the path to expanding this legislation in the future to further change corporate behaviour towards prioritising people and planet over profits.
These and more of our activities during 2023 can be found in our Annual Report for 2023/2024. It will be published after our AGM on 20th June and we will keep you updated in the next edition of our newsletter.
As you have hopefully seen, WFTO-Europe will hold this year’s AGM on 20th June at 11:00-14:00 CEST (10:00-13:00 UK time).
This year we have rather big items on the agenda: We need to elect a new European Representative to the WFTO Global Board; the Board of WFTO-Europe needs more members; and then the WFTO-Europe Board has proposed a process to discuss the future structure of the regions within WFTO. Specifically, there is a rationale for discussion whether and how to restructure our regional entity of WFTO-Europe as well as a proposed timeline for this process. We encourage you to look at these documents in advance (please find the link below).
Remember to register for the AGM here. And find all relevant documents here.
In case you cannot join, please remember to assign a proxy vote to another member, who can then vote on your behalf. It is very important that you make your voice heard for the important decisions taken on behalf of our region within the WFTO network.
2. Europe in a Nutshell
2.1 Upcoming EU Legislation – Are We Ready?
Over the past five years, the European Commission, Parliament and Council have worked on numerous files, some of which have the potential to deeply affect Fair Trade. These files represent a challenge for the movement, but also an opportunity to capitalise on its long-standing efforts in building fairer trade relations. To ensure we are up to the challenges ahead, WFTO-Europe organized a webinar on Monday 10th June on Upcoming EU legislation Affecting Members, featuring Caterina Occhio (member of the WFTO-Europe board) and Isabel Garland (Policy and Project Officer at FTAO) as speakers.
Caterina and Isabel touched upon a number of EU Regulations and Directives set to affect WFTO-Europe members, and specifically:
- Eco-design for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR): it is meant to reduce the environmental impact of products entering the EU internal market and foster sustainable production. By 2028 all consumer products entering the EU will need to have a Digital Product Passport to increase supply chain transparency and communicate in a standardized and accessible manner information about the social and environmental impact throughout their whole lifecycle; be accompanied by disclosed information as to the destruction of companies’ unsold products per financial year; and respect law requirements on durability, reparability, and recycling.
- Corporate Sustainability and Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD): it aims to ensure that bigger companies in the EU address the environmental and human rights impact of their supply chains. As such, it does not address SMEs directly, but they might still expect an impact since bigger companies will involve their business partners and suppliers in the due diligence process.
- Green Claims Directive (GCD): it is aimed at stopping green and social washing. It will require any business operating in the EU (except for micro enterprises) to, inter alia, demonstrate that their social and environmental claims are based on scientific evidence and apply to the whole product and not just parts of it.
- European Deforestation Regulation (EUDR): it wants to minimise the marketing of products linked to deforestation in the EU market. By the end of 2025 both large and medium-size operators and traders, as well as small and micro enterprises will have to be declared deforestation free according to the EUDR, respect the law of the country of origin, and be accompanied by a due diligence statement. The Directive will apply to 7 commodities and its derived products: cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm, rubber, soy, wood. In the case of leather or wood, these will be subject to the Regulation only if they are the main component of the product.
Other webinars will be organized in the upcoming months to follow up on new developments.
2.2 EU Elections – What’s Next?
In the past 5 years, EU institutions together have co-designed milestone legislation for the people and the planet. The most recent example is the Corporate Sustainable Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), formally (and finally!) adopted by the European Council on 24th May, and set to deliver improvements on the way big companies in the EU market address the human rights and environmental impacts of their supply chains.
This type of legislation demonstrates EU institutions’ power to choose for fairer and more inclusive policies, as well as the crucial importance of WFTO-Europe and the whole Fair Trade movement’s continuous engagement with these institutions. We hope to bring this collaboration forward in the new legislative period.
WFTO-Europe will continue to work to bring Fair Trade stances to the EU table for discussion and will, in particular, advocate in favour of legislation which:
- Promotes business models that make human rights and environmental protection their core business
- Protects the rights and dignity of workers
- Supports Fair Trade Agreements within and outside the EU
- Contributes to transforming the European Green Deal into a Global Green Deal
To improve the effectiveness of our action, we invite our members to share the contacts they might have with newly elected MEPs, in order to improve our capacity of keeping Fair Trade values high on the EU’s agenda for the next legislative period.
3. WFTO Around the World
3.1 Mr Botta’s Commitment to Fair Trade in Kenya
The Fair Trade movement would not be what it is today without the efforts of those people who first sided with marginalised communities of producers in the Global South and dedicated their lives to fight and advocate for fairer global trade relations. Among these trailblazers was Mr Andrea “Andrew” Botta. Recognised as one of the “founding fathers” of the Fair Trade movement, Mr. Botta devoted his life to the development of Meru Herbs Kenya, a farmer-owned producer organization that is part of the WFTO-Africa regional network.
Mr. Botta first arrived in Kenya in 1995, and in 1989 he became the project coordinator of the Nguruu Gakirwe Water Project, providing water to 2.000 families in the semi-arid region of Tharaka-Nithi, Kenya. Under his leadership, the Nguruu Gakirwe Water Project evolved into Meru Herbs, a comprehensive enterprise that now includes a jam and tea factory, as well as an ecotourism facility, and whose organically produced teas and jams are sold in the European market by numerous WFTO-Europe members.
Mr. Botta sadly passed away on April 17, 2024, aged 94. He will be deeply missed by both the local and international Fair Trade communities. However, we are confident that the legacy he built is in capable hands with the dedicated workers of Meru Herbs, who continue to uphold his vision.
“It’s like sharing the same glass of water with many people: if you are alone you can drink it up all by yourself, in two you drink a half of it, in four one quarter, but if you are a lot of people what is left for you is just one drop”
3.2 Altromercato’s Laboratorio InnovAzione
Among the strategic topics the Fair Trade movement is increasingly faced with is the engagement of younger generations in the movement, both as customers and volunteers. Indeed, many WFTO-Europe members have highlighted the twin need of expanding and diversifying their customer base, as well as of engaging the youth on Fair Trade topics to ensure the sustainability of the movement itself. Hence, different members have now started to capitalise on these discussions and have developed initiatives to address the issue of youth involvement in Fair Trade.
In this context, we turn the spotlight on our member Altromercato’s newly formed Laboratorio InnovAzione – translated: InnovA(c)tion Lab. The Lab is a group of 12 young volunteers and activists under 30 who, on the basis of their personal expertise and experience in the movement, advise and work with Altromercato on topics concerning the youth, from events to communication and education.
The group’s formation rests on another experience of successful youth engagement, i.e. the YPSE project (Young People for Sustainable Economy), an Erasmus+ project led by Altromercato and involving three other Fair Trade organisations of the global WFTO network: Norandino (Peru), GreenNet (Thailand), and Meru Herbs (Kenya). YPSE’s core idea was that of bringing together young Fair Trade volunteers and activists from around the world and ask directly to them what the movement’s main limitations in this regard are and what can be done to address them. One of the project’s outcomes is a set of Guidelines for Fair Trade organisations precisely on how to better engage with the youth. YPSE Guidelines are available here.
We wish good luck to the Lab and we hope their experience will be inspiring for other members facing challenges with youth engagement.
4. News from the Region
4.1 Kickstart of WFTO-Europe’s Sector Specific Working Groups
The recent years have posed a number of challenges for the Fair Trade movement and its members. The Covid-19 pandemic, the worsening of the global climate crisis, wars and rising prices have all contributed to challenging Fair Trade enterprises on different levels. Hence, in March 2024, WFTO-Europe decided to send out a survey to all of its members to gather data about their current situation. The purpose was to “take the temperature” of members’ current standing, detect any common problems, and develop an understanding of how WFTO-Europe can be of best support to the network. Quite naturally, the survey showed that members engaged in the same sectors of activity (food, retail, handicrafts) tend to be subject to the same challenges. As a consequence, WFTO-Europe decided to set-up sector-specific working groups, with the goal of allowing members with similar challenges to connect, exchange good practices, and inspire one another.
The first working group was launched on 22nd May and it gathered members from the textile sector who started to share their issues and priorities. As WFTO-Europe proceeds to establish the working groups for the other sectors as well, the main idea remains that of reinforcing the network and providing a space for members to meet at least twice a year, exchanging positive experiences and struggles.
WFTO-Europe thus encourages all of its members to register for the working groups and take the chance to connect with like-minded organisations and find mutual inspiration for current and future challenges.
This year our celebration of World Fair Trade Day revolved around the #BusinessRevolution Campaign, advocating for a new economy made of businesses that have a positive impact on the people and the planet. Indeed, the harmful social and environmental impacts of the current economic system are nowhere to hide anymore. Yet, change cannot be achieved through sustainable products only, we need a revolution, a Business Revolution! It is in fact businesses who can be a force for good and change the way our economic system operates by making social and environmental sustainability their core business. And indeed, Fair Trade enterprises are leaders of this revolution!
Hence, we participated in WFTO Global Photo Action to showcase our support for mission-led enterprises, but we also launched our own small communication campaign to shed light on our member’s varied engagement in the business revolution. In particular, we asked them why they are a Fair Trade enterprise, why are Fair Trade enterprises needed today, and how do they ensure respect for human rights and environmental standards. Read their answers below!
As a final step, we also attended the Global Community Call organised by WFTO Global to celebrate World Fair Trade Day with the whole Fair Trade Network!
Fair Trade enterprises are changing the world, one step at a time: we want to take this opportunity to thank once again all members of the network for their efforts in building a fairer future for all.
5. News from the Board
5.1 Rember to run for EU/Board Representative
We are still looking for candidates for the WFTO-Europe Board of Directors. Our President, Juanjo Martínez, will finish his second mandate at this AGM, so the Board will be down to just three members. This is the minimum, according to our Constitution.
We hope that many of you will consider running as candidate to help steer WFTO-Europe through these important and perhaps challenging times with a new European Parliament. The Board convenes 4-6 times a year, mostly online but WFTO-Europe covers costs (including travel and accommodation) for one face-to-face Board meeting per year. In particular, the Board would benefit from new candidates from Eastern and Northern Europe, candidates representing a Worldshop member and candidates with expertise and experience in fundraising. To apply, please send us a filled-in application form and three letters of support from other members. All documents can be found in the shared AGM folder here (forms 09a., b. and c.).
Additionally, WFTO-Europe is looking for a new representative for Europe to the Global Board of Directors. This representative will be a member of the WFTO Global Board of Directors, elected to represent the region of Europe within WFTO. The candidacy procedure is much simpler, please just inform the WFTO-Europe secretariat of your candidacy by emailing Mikkel Nørgård at coordination@wfto-europe.org with a description of your vision for representing WFTO-Europe on the WFTO Global Board and the skills you will contribute with.
If you have any questions about running as a candidate for either Boards, please email Mikkel at the same email address.
5.2 Updating Contact Information
Lately we have been experiencing some issues with members’ contact information. When we send out emails, in fact, many of them automatically bounce back or cannot be delivered. We are not sure why this is happening, but it seems that members’ email settings are filtering emails sent to large numbers of recipients, such as ours, and refusing delivery.
This is not ideal, of course, as our emails often contain relevant information for AGMs, working groups, etc. Unfortunately, we have no other way of communicating with our members. Therefore, we kindly ask members to:
- Always check the spam folder for WFTO-Europe communications
- Check that WFTO-Europe’s email addresses, and especially communication@wfto-europe.org, are not listed as unwanted contacts
- Send to communication@wfto-europe.org updated contact information for your organization, specifying whom you would like us to contact for WFTO-Europe related information
This is very important as not being able to receive our emails may cause members to miss important information!
6. Opportunities
New opportunities alert! As we strengthen our mission of building a stronger European network, we have decided to include a new section in our Newsletter where you can find useful fundraising and webinars opportunities. We hope these resources will translate into useful economic and training opportunities for our members.
And remember: WFTO-Europe is always keen to partner! We invite members to reach out if they plan to apply for, or already have access to, fundraising opportunities where our expertise could be of use. Please contact us at projects@wfto-europe.org for more information.
RL Addressing Gender Based Violence and Hate Based Crime in Central Europe
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour
Deadline: July 5th, 2024
Eligibility:
- U.S.-based and foreign-based non-profit organizations/nongovernmental organizations (NGO) and public international organizations; private, public, or state institutions of higher education; and for-profit organizations or businesses.
- Applications submitted by for-profit entities may be subject to additional review
Program objectives:
- Increasing public awareness of the various forms of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and hate-based crimes as well as relevant laws and available protections;
- Strengthening collaboration among diverse stakeholders to prevent and respond to GBV and hate-based crimes;
- Expand availability and accessibility of survivor-centred support;
- Engage in constructive advocacy to strengthen national policies.
For more information: here
Circular Economy and Quality of Life – standard action projects (LIFE Programme)
European Commission
Deadline: September 19th, 2024
Eligibility:
- Be legal entities (public or private bodies)
- Be established in one of the eligible countries (EU Member States, listed EEA countries and countries associated to the LIFE Programme)
- The coordinator must be established in an eligible country.
The specific objective is to cover one or more of the following topics:
- Activities in Support of Public Administrations’ Decision-Making and Voluntary
- Environmental Compliance Assurance and Access to Justice Approaches
- Behavioural Change and Awareness-Raising Initiatives.
For more information: portal of the EC
Green Deal Storytelling: practical, hands-on training session on storytelling. This session is intended to help you deepen your practical skills in crafting a story, so that you can repeat the process for other stories in that you want to tell about your Green Deal Call-funded project, or future research.
- Thursday 4 July, 11:00-13:00 CEST, Zoom
- Register here.
Sufficiency: How to communicate and build the narrative?: CAN Europe shares its view on the economy of tomorrow. Why is it so difficult to talk about sufficiency and sufficiency-oriented policies? How to overcome resistances and move forward?
- Tuesday 18 June at 13:30-14:30 CEST, Zoom
- Register here.
7. Agenda
7.1 Global Summit in Cape Town
Join the global Fair Trade community at the upcoming International Fair Trade Summit in Cape Town! From September 17th to 20th, 2024, leaders, practitioners, and advocates from all around the globe will come together to discuss the future of the Fair Trade movement and its potential to transform the global economy. Participants to the Summit will have the unique opportunity to attend inspiring keynote speeches, interactive panel discussions, and insightful workshops, gaining valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities facing the movement against the background of the Beautiful Cape Town, known for its natural beauty, its rich cultural heritage, and its famous cousine.
If you believe Fair Trade has the potential to change the world, this is where it all happens, this is where you need to be: Join us at the International Fair Trade Summit to work towards a just and sustainable global economy!
Early-bird discounts are available until the end of June. Virtual participation is also possible. More details can be found here.