By Huang Qing (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-15 07:19

The European Union's Framework Directive on Eco-design Requirements for Energy Using Products (EuP), or the third-generation "green barrier", was implemented on Saturday.

The EuP standard puts stricter environmental requirements on energy-using products' life cycle assessment and, therefore, exercises restrictive influence on those products' design, manufacture, use, maintenance and retrieval.

Compared to the EU's two earlier green barrier directives, the EuP directive imposes stricter requirements, has a wider scope and will have a greater impact on the business of relevant firms.

Green barriers are an economic phenomenon, which emerged this century as environmental-protection awareness grows ever stronger across the globe. Europe is an area where environmental protection consciousness runs highest and, consequently, related undertakings take on an aura of sacredness.

It is against this ideological background that the EU has promulgated its green barrier directives. Thanks to the fact that environmental problems pose a serious threat to mankind and that sustainable development and green consumption represent the trend of the times, the barriers do have some virtue.

But behind the morality facade, I fear some protectionist considerations are at work.

Dictated by globalization necessities, the world's industrial structure is undergoing a major realignment and some manufacturing operations are moving to the developing world, of which China is a part.

However, the rapid expansion of manufacturing industries in these countries rouses worries from developed countries. In this context, the developed nations put in place green and technological barriers one after the other, in a bid to hold an advantageous position over the competition.

By setting up green technological standards, developed countries automatically push up the cost of developing nations' exports by large margins and, in turn, weaken their competitive power.

Besides enjoying technological advantages, developed countries maintain an edge over developing nations in testing technologies. So the latter, apart from bearing larger production costs, have to pay large amounts of "soft costs" in the forms of testing and certification fees.

In addition, the green barriers serve to make the deteriorating environment in developing countries all the worse.

Developing countries generally implement lower environmental standards than developed ones. And transnational corporate giants, all of which are headquartered in developed countries, shift energy-consuming and high-polluting operations into developing nations through making investments, or simply dump non-green products into these nations.

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