Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Enforcing labour standards via EU free-trade agreements

Giovanni Gruni 18th February 2019

Free-trade agreements have raised huge controversy over clauses allowing of corporate challenge. But they can be used to enforce labour standards.

labour standards

Giovanni Gruni

The European Union is an extremely active international actor in the area of trade, being widely involved in the negotiation and conclusion of free-trade agreements (FTAs) with partner countries.  Many of them, such as the CETA with Canada, the now aborted transatlantic TTIP or the EU-Japan FTA, made the news and spurred intense social debate.

All new-generation free-trade agreements include a sustainable-development clause between the parties promoting, among other things, a set of labour standards as well as conventions of the International Labour Organisation. For instance, most of the EU’s FTAs contain provisions to protect the right to collective bargaining and freedom of association, even to forbid discrimination at the place of work. Legal enforcement has been the object of an institutional and political debate, with the European Parliament calling for years for better enforcement of environmental provisions. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the ruling German coalition, among others, have also called for stronger obligations and better enforcement.

On December 17th 2018, for the first time in history, the European Commission sought consultations with a partner state, South Korea, for failure to respect a labour-standard obligation in an EU FTA. This is a welcome development, which comes almost ten years after the entry into force of the agreement and the prolonged failure of the Asian EU partner to ratify and implement four of the eight fundamental ILO conventions.

Labour standards

But there is still a long way to go to rebalance the discrepancy between the enforcement of labour standards and the other obligations, concerning trade, investment and intellectual property, contained in the EU’s FTAs. Under the EU Trade Barrier Regulation (TBR), EU companies can file a complaint to the European Commission when a country is not respecting an obligation under such an agreement. This leads to a commission  investigation and a number of actions can follow against the state concerned. Such a system allows private parties to be actively involved in the enforcement of commitments made under FTAs—although it has the advantage of allowing enforcement at EU level before triggering the more burdensome and diplomatically scarring international-dispute-settlement mechanism in the agreement itself. Labour standards and environmental obligations are however now excluded from the set of rights which can be enforced via the TBR.


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

This is the case even where EU FTAs already contain precise obligations to ratify and implement the relevant ILO conventions, including concerning core labour standards. This situation greatly damages the capacity of the EU to uphold labour standards and leaves most labour violations unaddressed.

In a recent paper, Marco Bronckers and I put forward a proposal to allow labour standards to be enforced, via a private complaint procedure under the TBR, in front of the commission. This would provide representative social partners with the legal standing necessary to file a complaint whenever a state  is violating a labour obligation in an EU FTA.

Only when the procedure at EU level did not lead to compliance would we then envisage a fully-fledged third-party adjudication system in the FTA itself. In the case of persistent violations we also propose a system of financial penalties and trade sanctions, as an instrument of last resort which is not now available in any of the EU’s FTAs.

The Court of Justice of the European Union has recognised that labour standards in EU FTAs are entirely part of the EU commercial policy and have the same legal standing as any other FTA obligation. By allowing the enforcement of labour standards via a private complaint procedure, the EU would increase the coherence between its trade policy and its social and human-rights policies, as mandated by article 21 of the Treaty on European Union. In addition, it would endow labour standards with the same capacity of enforcement as the other obligations contained in EU FTAs.

transatlantic trade,TTIP,trade deals
Giovanni Gruni

Giovanni Gruni holds a PhD in international economic law from the University of Oxford. He teaches world-trade and EU law. His main research interest is the inclusion of sustainable development in free-trade agreements.

You are here: Home / Politics / Enforcing labour standards via EU free-trade agreements

Most Popular Posts

Russia,information war Russia is winning the information warAiste Merfeldaite
Nanterre,police Nanterre and the suburbs: the lid comes offJoseph Downing
Russia,nuclear Russia’s dangerous nuclear consensusAna Palacio
Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto

Most Recent Posts

OECD,inflation,monetary The OECD and the Great Monetary RestrictionRonald Janssen
prostitution,Europe,abolition Prostitution is not a free choice for womenLina Gálvez Muñoz
Abuse,work,workplace,violence Abuse at work: who bears the brunt?Agnès Parent-Thirion and Viginta Ivaskaite-Tamosiune
Ukraine,fatigue Ukraine’s cause: momentum is diminishingStefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko
Vienna,social housing Vienna social-housing model: celebrated but misusedGabu Heindl

Other Social Europe Publications

strategic autonomy Strategic autonomy
Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The future of remote work

The 12 chapters collected in this volume provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the impact and the future trajectories of remote work, from the nexus between the location from where work is performed and how it is performed to how remote locations may affect the way work is managed and organised, as well as the applicability of existing legislation. Additional questions concern remote work’s environmental and social impact and the rapidly changing nature of the relationship between work and life.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound Talks: does Europe have the skills it needs for a changing economy?

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s research manager, Tina Weber, its senior research manager, Gijs van Houten, and Giovanni Russo, senior expert at CEDEFOP (The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training), about Europe’s skills challenges and what can be done to help workers and businesses adapt to future skills demands.

Listen where you get your podcasts, or for free, by clicking on the link below


LISTEN HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube