The EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement and Workers' Rights

Abstract

The EU-UK TCA goes beyond the diluted, and at times tokenistic, protection of multilateral labour standards contained in the other FTAs concluded by the EU, e.g. with countries like Canada or South Korea. However, the few additional labour clauses it contains, and the overall weak supervision and dispute resolution procedures applying to them, offer an unsatisfactory regulatory framework, one that is unlikely to deter future UK Government from eroding presentday standards. The implementation of the labour provisions in the TCA will require close monitoring in the years to come and should become one of the priorities of the five-year review catered for by Article FINPROV.3.