Normative Power and Soft Conditionality -- Labour Rights Promotion in EU Trade Agreements

Over the past two decades, bilateral trade agreements have proliferated. In response to disappointing progress at the multilateral level, trading powers like the EU have increasingly used their market access power as a means to promote non-trade objectives with third countries. Through so-called ‘Sustainable Development Chapters’, the EU’s new generation of regional and bilateral trade agreements include explicit provisions on labour rights promotion, Corporate Social Responsibility and environmental sustainability. While legal scholars have commented extensively on these provisions, little is known about their practical application. With regard to labour rights in particular, the ILO has noted the lack of empirical evidence on the effects of integrating labour rights provisions in trade agreements.

The key objective of this paper study is to gain a better understanding of what the integration of labour standards into EU trade agreements entails in practice. We focus on how the mechanisms for consultation, monitoring and compliance provided under the sustainability chapter are operationalized. We do so by looking into the implementation of the EU-Colombia trade agreement. Based on extensive desk research and a series of interviews in Brussels and Bogotá, the paper provides insights on how the practical application of labour provisions and monitoring mechanisms plays out in a particular country context. Our findings impinge on a wider debate on the use of trade liberalisation and non-binding, ‘soft’ conditionality as a means to leverage the EU’s ‘normative power’ alongside, or in support of local governance structures.

Normative power and soft conditionality. Labour rights promotion in EU trade agreements