The chapter explains why the EU explicitly decided not to intervene in private fair trade governance on two separate occasions, in 1999 and in 2009. The chapter starts by comparing private fair trade governance schemes, including Fairtrade International, Rainforest Alliance, and UTZ Certified. It then discusses why EU policymakers in the 1990s focused on Fairtrade only and declined to intervene because of the specific North–South trade dynamics of this issue area; the lack of concrete productive opportunities in the EU; and institutional constraints of the international trade regime. The Fair Trade movement’s successful harmonization of complementary private governance schemes also contributed to the EU’s non-interventionist approach. The broadening of the policy domain beyond Fairtrade in the early 2000s did not lead to fragmentation concerns, since differences among the schemes were framed as commercial and economic-ideological in nature and not problematized as a fragmentation issue. Active lobbying by and on behalf of private governance schemes ensured this outcome, resulting in a market for private governance that remains free of public intervention.

The chapter explains why the EU has so far failed to intervene in private fisheries governance. The chapter starts with comparing private governance schemes since the 1990s. It then analyses EU policy discussions until late 2017, showing that until very recently all involved stakeholders agreed that the fragmentation of the private governance market needed to be addressed. Differences of opinion on the desirability of publicly supporting product differentiation, however, have continued to exist. While most stakeholders consider the costs such differentiation would impose on European producers too high and therefore support procedural regulation, the European Parliament has consistently favored both standards and procedural regulations in the form of an EU-level certification and eco-labeling scheme. Attempts to create a policy failed in 2008–2009 when a legislative proposal for procedural regulation was abandoned, and in 2013 when the discussion was integrated in the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. A 2016 report on feasible policy options, moreover, questioned the fragmentation of the private governance market, casting further doubt on the likelihood of public intervention.