Environmental certification for more sustainable imports

As France imports high quantities of products which have environmental impacts abroad due to extraction, transformations, and transports of used materials, and which are not visible for consumers, environmental certification could be a mean to reduce these impacts as it would allow consumers to identify the less polluting products, and incite producers to put such products on the market. After having discussed these issues, the author outlines key factors of success for such a certification, briefly identifies required adjustments at the technical level (requirement level, cost anticipation), and at the social and political level. She also evokes accompanying measures, and outlines that environmental certification is only a tool among others such as partnership agreements currently being negotiated between the European Union and other countries, or a combination of certification and cooperation with extracting countries (as practiced by Germany)