A new aspect of EU’s soft power: how the EU can help support Fair Trade

This paper aims at assessing a number of policies and means employed so far by the EU to foster fair trade in its more general significance, exploring at the same time ways in which further experiences in this field could be nurtured. Its structure is as follows. After a second section in which I describe the wider context of UN policies in which the EU initiatives in favour of a less unbalanced globalisation take place, a concise theoretical analysis of fairness in trade follows with an emphasis on some recent explanations that have been put forth on the subject. Sections 4 and 5 are devoted to an investigation on fresh developments in fair trade practices and the current situation of them within the EU, respectively. In section 6 several proposals for enhancing the EU policies in the sector are presented, whereas the last one contains some final remarks.