Civil society meetings in EU trade agreements: recommendations and lessons for EPAs

EU trade agreements increasingly involve civil society to discuss and monitor sustainable development. Evaluations of these civil society meetings vary widely from being mere talking shops to empowering platforms. The new EPAs have weak or no provisions on civil society involvement and should be strengthened in this regard. In order to maximise the full potential of these meetings, lessons can be drawn from the existing mechanisms

TTIP and Labour Standards

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will follow EU and US recent trade policy practice to include labour provisions. These could limit the risk that liberalisation results in social dumping and promote upward change. This Policy Department A study concludes that the EU could take a precautionary stance and employ various instruments that increase the chances that TTIP will have positive social consequences. TTIP may combine the strengths of the EU and US approaches to labour provisions, while improving their weaknesses. More analysis of the social consequences of liberalisation and labour provisions might be stimulated and strong flanking measures at the EU and national level be foreseen