The Promotion and Integration of Human Rights in EU External Trade Relations

Samantha Velluti

doi:10.5334/ujiel.342

Abstract

<p class="p1">The European Union (EU) has made the upholding of human rights an integral part of its external trade relations and requires that all trade, cooperation, partnership and association agreements with third countries, including unilateral trade instruments, contain with varying modalities and intensity a commitment to the respect for human rights. The paper discusses selected aspects of the EU’s promotion and integration of human rights in its external trade relations and assesses the impact of the changes introduced by the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon (ToL) on EU practice.

Highlights

This paper discusses certain aspects of direct relevance to the European Unions’s (EU) promotion and integration of human rights in its external trade law and policy before and after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon (ToL) and in so doing it unravels and assesses extant limitations to EU practice and ways of addressing them.Since the mid-1990s, the EU has developed a sophisticated array of instruments to promote human rights in its external trade policy such as human rights clauses in bilateral trade agreements and a set of human rights criteria in the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP).[1]
As posited by Harrison, Human Rights Impact Assessments’ (HRIAs) must be based on an clear evaluation of the impact of trade law obligations on relevant, codified human rights obligations that apply to a given country avoiding that the inclusion of human rights in the assessment becomes a mere window dressing exercises.[171]
The foregoing shows that the combined use of ex ante trade Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) and ex post evaluations could significantly contribute to strengthening the EU’s practice of human rights conditionality in trade agreements, provided the methodologies employed in the ex ante trade SIAs and ex post evaluations increasingly take into consideration the human rights impact of EU trade agreements and, most importantly, that the EU acts upon their findings in a way which is not limited to maximising the benefits of trade agreements and minimising their potential negative impact and as ‘enabling mechanisms’ which help the EU to better comply with its own human rights obligations

Summary

Introduction

This paper discusses certain aspects of direct relevance to the European Unions’s (EU) promotion and integration of human rights in its external trade law and policy before and after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon (ToL) and in so doing it unravels and assesses extant limitations to EU practice and ways of addressing them. The drafting of the Principles for Responsible Contracts – Integrating the Management of Human Rights Risks into State-Investor Contract Negotiations[11] and the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations’ ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework[12] are aimed at fulfilling the aforementioned objectives and at reducing the negative externalities on third parties such as affected communities and service recipients. 17 Matthew Craven, ‘The Violence of Dispossession: Extraterritoriality and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ in Mashood Baderin and Robert McCorquodale (eds), Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Action (OUP 2007) 83

18 TEU art 2 provides that

The Autonomy of the EU Legal Order and Human Rights Regime

Evaluation

Harnessing Human Rights to Improve Trade Sustainability Impact Assessments

Conclusion