Can labour provisions work beyond the border? Evaluating the effects of EU free trade agreements

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2015.00037.x
• Date: 01 September 2016
• Published date: 01 September 2016

International Labour Review, Vol. 155 (2016), No. 3

Copyright © The authors 2016

Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2016

* School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London, email: l.cam

pling@qmul.ac.uk. ** School of Law, University of Warwick, email: j.harrison.3@warwick.ac.uk.

***

Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, email: b.j.richardson@

warwick.ac.uk. ****

School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London, email: a.m.smith@

qmul.ac.uk. Authorship of this article is fully collaborative. The article arises from a research pro-

ject, funded by the Queen Mary–Warwick strategic partnership, entitled “The externalization of

European Union economic governance: The mismatch of economic and social development?”. We

are very grateful to both institutions for this funding, which enabled research involving interviews

with key informants and trade policy/trade data analysis. We are also grateful for the research as-

sistance of Tim Edkins, Peg Murray-Evans and Aidan Wong, and for comments received from the

International Labour Review’s anonymous referee and the editors of the Special Issue. A previous

version of this article was presented at the workshop “Fostering labor rights in the global economy:

Multidisciplinary perspectives on the effectiveness of transnational public and private policy initia-

tives”, University of Leuven, 20 –21 February 2014 (see also Campling et al., 2014).

Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors, and

publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

Can labour provisions work beyond

the border? Evaluating the effects

of EU free trade agreements

Liam CAMPLING,* James HARRISON,** Ben RICHARDSON***

and Adrian SMITH****

Abstract. The European Union (EU) has concluded close to 50 bilateral free trade

agreements (FTAs), with around 10 more under negotiation. EU FTAs now include

“trade and sustainable development” chapters, which contain labour provisions

based on a “promotional” rather than “conditional” approach. In the context of the

debate on the purpose and efcacy of the trade–labour linkage, the authors exam-

ine the possibilities and limitations of these provisions, drawing attention to the

lack of research on their effect “on the ground”. To bridge this gap, they propose

a new research agenda for evaluating the effects of labour provisions in EU FTAs.

Inclusiveness is just as important outside the EU’s

borders. We are committed to promoting sustainable

development, international labour standards and decent

work also outside the EU (European Commission,

201 0, p. 8).

Since the 1990s and the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO),

the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the European

Union’s Single Market, the rules that govern international trade have been

International Labour Review358

subject to intense academic and public debate. Two aspects of this debate are

particularly noteworthy. First, the idea that liberalizing trade relationships will

lead to increased prosperity for all has become increasingly contested, and the

causal relationships between trade openness, economic growth and broad so-

cial goals such as poverty reduction and better working conditions are now ac-

knowledged to be more complex than initially supposed (McCulloch, Winters

and Cirera, 2001; Harrison, 20 07). Second, many recent trade agreements – in

contrast to the multilateral rules agreed in the 1947 General Agreement on

Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that were centred on “openness” and the unifying

principle of liberalization – have involved the creation of regulatory frame-

works that place members under positive obligations on a variety of issues,

from the protection of intellectual property to conducting scientic risk assess-

ments of food safety regulations (Heiskanen, 2004). As a result, there is now

widespread recognition of the need to carefully scrutinize international trade

agreements in order to understand the complex effects that their rules have

on the international trading system, on individual countries operating within

that system, and on particularly vulnerable groups that may be negatively af-

fected (Harrison, 2007 and 2014).

This article concentrates on another set of positive obligations: inter-

national labour standards, provisions on which are increasingly prevalent in bi-

lateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs). The article explores a novel

approach to the inclusion of these labour provisions by the European Union

(EU), concentrating on the “new generation” of EU bilateral FTAs, starting

with the 2011 agreement with the Republic of Korea (the “EU–South Korea

FTA”). These agreements are part of the EU’s project to establish a “deeper”

and “more comprehensive” range of trade and associated obligations.1 This

focus allows us to investigate the effects of a number of similar labour pro-

visions, used in agreements that vary greatly in terms of their geographical,

developmental and broader legal contexts. Ultimately, we wish to know the

extent to which – if at all – the EU meets its own lofty rhetoric outlined in the

epigraph to this article, especially given the assumption held by many critics

of FTAs that “agreements will only be as useful as the politicians desire them

to be” (Vogt, 2014).

The remainder of the article is organized into four sections. The rst re-

caps the failed attempts to incorporate labour standards in the WTO system,

and the subsequent diversion of these efforts into the bilateral sphere. It is

important to reect on these differentiated bilateral “experiments”, since they

cover an increasingly large proportion of international trade between coun-

tries. The second section then explores one important and widespread model

of labour provisions – the “promotional” model, which the EU has incorp-

orated within the “trade and sustainable development” chapter of all its re-

1 The language “deep” and “comprehensive” in the EU’s current trade agreement agenda

was rst captured in the negotiations with neighbouring States involved in the Eastern Partnership

and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership over a range of bilateral Deep and Comprehensive Free

Trade Agreements (DCFTAs) (see Wijkman, 2011; Smith, 2015 ).