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Trade Sustainability Impact Assessments (SIAs) serve to assess the potential economic, social and environmental impacts of trade agreements in the EC as well as its negotiating partners in order to ensure coherence between trade liberalization and sustainable development.

The “GSP+” arrangement aims at providing an incentive to vulnerable developing countries to ratify and effectively implement internationally agreed standards on sustainable development and good governance.

The EC has been including provisions and commitments on implementing social and environmental standards in its contractual bilateral agreements with the view to foster sustainable development.

The EC continues to be devoted to multilateral action to ensure that trade rules are supportive of sustainable development, as shown by its ambitious stance in the DDA negotiations on Trade and Environment and, on the social sustainability side, by its support for appropriate special and differential treatment for developing countries across the key negotiating areas of the DDA.

The EU has been playing a major role in the fight against climate change, actively supporting the climate change negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to agree on a new post-Kyoto climate regime at the international level and strengthening its Emission Trading System (EU ETS) domestically in order to meet aggressive carbon reduction targets.

The EU has been persistently supporting the liberalization of trade in environmental goods and services within the DDA negotiations.

The EC has been pursuing early liberalization of environmental goods and services in its FTAs under negotiation.

The EC's Lisbon Strategy, adopted in March 2000 and reformulated in March 2005, is an action and development plan aimed at making the EC "the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion, and respect for the environment by 2010".

The 2007-2013 Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) aims to encourage the competitiveness of European enterprises through increased use of information technologies, environmental technologies, and renewable energy sources.

The EU supports key elements of sustainable development (environment protection, liberalization of trade in environment al goods and services, social development, and consumer concerns).