Empirical evidence on the trade-governance nexus tends to show that institutional differences restrict bilateral trade flows. In this paper, we introduce governance gap as a measure of the degree to which governance and institutions differ between countries. Using a sample of EU imports from 193 exporting countries, we examine the potential of voluntary food certification as surrogate institutions to overcome the governance gap at the country level. Our results show that while widening governance gaps lead to lower bilateral exports, the interaction of certification and the governance gap is positively associated with bilateral exports, hence partially offsetting the direct trade-inhibiting effects Acknowledgement : This research was financially supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through the GlobalFood Program (grant number RTG 1666). We thank the GlobalGAP Head Office, Cologne for providing us data on certification. Dela-Dem Doe Fiankor gracefully acknowledges financial support from the Katholischer Akademischer Ausl ?ander-Dienst (KAAD), Germany