The Political Economy of the EU Approach to the Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar

Arlo Poletti,Daniela Sicurelli

doi:10.17645/pag.v10i1.4678

Abstract

European institutions have repeatedly represented the EU as an actor that can use the attractiveness of its market to promote human rights internationally. From this perspective, EU trade sanctions represent a hard power tool to push the government of states accused of major human rights violations to abide by international law. In its reaction to the Rohingya crisis in 2018, despite the European Parliament’s call for the lifting of Myanmar’s trade preferences, the Council of the EU stated that it would rather tackle the problem by taking a “constructive approach” based on dialogue. We provide a political-economy explanation of this choice, making a plausible case that the political pressures from European importers and exporters, not to jeopardise trade relations with Myanmar, prevailed over the demands of European protectionist groups and NGOs advocating a tougher position. The firms interested in maintaining preferential trade relations with Myanmar were primarily motivated by a desire to avoid a disruption of trade and investment links within global value chains (GVCs) so that they could continue competing with Chinese enterprises.

Highlights

The EU has actively promoted human rights, labour rights, and democracy in Myanmar since the 1990s
The comparison between the EU’s decisions to impose generalised system of preferences (GSP) suspension in its relations with Myanmar in 1996 and the reluctance of the EU to reinstate such a sanc‐ tion following the 2017 Rohingya crisis show that international political economy (IPE) motivations have contributed to the softening of the European approach to their human rights violations
The increasing integration of Association of South‐East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the global value chains (GVCs) in the last two decades has altered the interests of European investors and retailers who have begun to consider the region an attractive partner

Summary

Introduction

The EU has actively promoted human rights, labour rights, and democracy in Myanmar since the 1990s. In 1996, following the imposition of sanctions in the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy, it opted (for the first time in the history of the EU external relations) to suspend the generalised system of preferences (GSP) in relation to the Asian coun‐ try Such a suspension was based on the accusation that the military junta supported forced labour. Since the decision to suspend the GSP scheme in cases of human or labour rights violations is a policy choice that affects key domestic trade‐related constituen‐ cies in the EU, this implies that firms integrated into GVCs could be expected to oppose the suspension of the GSP and increase the political weight of the domestic coali‐ tion supporting this policy stance. As a further probe, we briefly consider the case of EU relations with Cambodia

Existing Explanations

Argument

A Longitudinal Case Study of EU–Myanmar Relations

A Further Probe

Findings

Conclusion