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

What social face of the new EU trade agreements? Beyond the 'soft' approach

The EU has often been accused of soft approach to trade-labour linkages in trade agreement by the inclusion of labour provisions in the trade and sustainable development chapter and by a focus on cooperation and dialogue. Rather than focusing on hard enforcement proceeding, the EU is not yet exploring all the opportunities created under these chapters. This Policy Brief outlines a different approach that the EU can use in demanding respect for labour rights in its trade agreement with third countries. It shows the need to develop a thorough, systematic and inclusive monitoring process involving civil society while developing an holistic approach for the promotion of labour rights going beyond EU’s trade relations

Domestic advisory groups in EU trade agreements

Since the EU–Korea trade agreement in 2011, all chapters on trade and sustainable development (TSD) establish civil society mechanisms to monitor the commitments made in this chapter: a domestic advisory group (DAG) for each party and an annual transnational civil society meeting. The former is a membership-based closed mechanism, while the latter is not member-based and therefore more open and less structured than the DAGs. In this report, we focus on DAGs, the most institutionalised and permanent civil society bodies under the TSD chapters. The objective of this study is to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of DAGs, identify their main challenges, distinguish teething problems from structural issues and put forward solutions to address them. Original data collection was carried out through a survey, to which 50 EU and 74 Non-EU DAG members responded, and 18 interviews with EU and Non-EU DAG members

Do labour rights matter for export? A qualitative comparative analysis of pineapple trade to the EU

Labour norms are increasingly considered in trade relations, but is the protection of labour standards a necessary condition for export to the EU? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis, based on countries that export pineapples to the EU, shows that labour standards protection matters in combination with distance, zero tariffs and institutional quality in a number of cases. However, for none of the cases was it a sufficient condition on its own for determining exports to the European market. Rather, we show that (1) having a zero tariff is necessary for a relatively large share of export to the EU, and (2) labour standards protection can make a difference when the institutional quality is weak in some African cases, in contrast to Latin American exporters

The impact of labour rights commitments in EU trade agreements : the case of Peru

While the inclusion of labour rights in European Union (EU) trade agreements has become an ‘unobjectionable norm’, analyses of their impact have been largely absent from the literature. This article aims to partly fill this gap in existing research by examining the impact of labour rights commitments in the EU–Peru–Colombia agreement, with particular reference to the agricultural sector in Peru. Following a brief background overview of labour rights in agriculture in Peru, we draw up the analytical framework for assessing the impact of these commitments. We discern three distinctive legal commitments and find that they are flexible and conservative, also compared to provisions in other EU trade agreements. Subsequently, we assess the impact of these commitments by analysing to what extent they are being upheld in practice. Empirical evidence from several sources, including field research, shows that the Peruvian government has failed to implement the labour rights commitments in several respects. In the conclusions, we point to the cautious role of the EU, which has scope to monitor Peru’s labour rights compliance more proactively

Trade unions in multi-stakeholder initiatives : what shapes their participation?

There is a growing concern about the extent to which multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs), designed to improve social and environmental sustainability in global supply chains, give a meaningful voice to less powerful stakeholders. Trade unions are one particular civil society group whose participation in MSIs has received little scholarly attention so far. The objective of this paper is to examine the determinants that enable and constrain trade union participation in MSIs. Based on interviews, focus groups, observations and document analysis we determine local trade union participation in three MSIs, operating at company, national and transnational level respectively, in the Costa Rican pineapple industry. To explain the limited encountered trade union participation, an analytical framework is developed combining structural and agency dimensions, namely the MSI design and trade union's power resources. The findings show shortcomings in the representativeness, procedural fairness and consensual orientation in the design and implementation of the MSIs. These are, however, not sufficient to explain weak trade union participation as trade union power resources also have an influence. Strong network embeddedness and improved infrastructural resources had a positive effect, whereas the lack of internal solidarity and unfavourable narrative resources constrained the unions' participation