Does dialogue work? The effectiveness of labor standards in EU preferential trade agreements

Postnikov, Evgeny; Bastiaens, Ida

doi:10.1080/13501763.2014.910869

Cited by 88 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Informed by this debate on how the EU governs labour standards is a second set of claims about what its effects have been. Postnikov and Bastiaens (, p. 931) offer a mixed methods study of EU bilateral trade agreements in force prior to 2010, concluding that those ‘with labour provisions have a positive and statistically significant impact on workers’ rights in signatory nations’. Regression analysis is used to demonstrate the impact, while interviews in Brussels and with one informant in Chile are used to buttress the claim that what causes this positive effect is the way state officials are educated about, and normalized into, upholding labour standards.…”

Section: Existing Academic Debates On Labour Standards In Eu Ftasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governing Labour Standards through Free Trade Agreements: Limits of the European Union's Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters

Harrison

Barbu

Campling

et al. 2018

J of Common Market Studies

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The EU has established a new architecture of international labour standards governance within the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters of its Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). To examine the operationalization of this framework, we draw upon 121 interviews undertaken with key informants in three FTAs signed with the Caribbean, South Korea and Moldova. We engage with wider debates over external governance and the projection of EU power by showing how operational failings, including a lack of legal and political prioritization of TSD chapters and shortcomings in the implementation of key provisions, have hindered the impact of the FTAs upon labour standards. We also identify significant limitations to the EU's 'common formulation' approach when applied to different trading partner contexts, alongside ambiguities about the underlying purpose of the trade-labour linkage. Reflection about the function and purpose of labour standards provisions in EU trade policy is therefore required.

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Section: Existing Academic Debates On Labour Standards In Eu Ftasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governing Labour Standards through Free Trade Agreements: Limits of the European Union's Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters

Harrison

Barbu

Campling

et al. 2018

J of Common Market Studies

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“…Coercive diffusion has been a longstanding feature of international intellectual property law (Sell, ). For that matter, coercion can be employed in other policy areas, such as human rights and labor standards (Hafner‐Burton, ; Postnikov and Bastiaens, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

International Coercion and the Diffusion of Regulatory Data Protection

Michael¹

2016

World Intellectual Property

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Prior to 1990, regulatory data protection existed only in 14 highly developed countries. Since then, 60 additional countries have adopted regulatory data protection. New adopters include a large number of countries with no domestic pharmaceutical industry. These countries will face higher pharmaceutical prices as a result of offering regulatory data protection. Why would countries that stand to lose from offering regulatory data protection choose to do so? The author argues that the global diffusion of regulatory data protection can be directly traced to international coercion from the United States and the European Union (EU). The US coerces weaker trading partners into adopting regulatory data protection by requiring such protection as a condition of concluding trade agreements or bilateral intellectual property agreements. Meanwhile, the EU coerces applicants by demanding that they adopt such rights during EU accession negotiations, on average four years prior to accession. He tested these claims using a multi-method research design that combines event history analysis with evidence from leaked US diplomatic cables and public EU accession documents. His findings demonstrate that coercive diffusion can take place by means of threats, and that countries often actively oppose adopting intellectual property rights, but nevertheless adopt them due to international coercion.

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“…Here, a distinction is often made between a 'soft' EU approach and a 'hard' US approach (Brown, 2015;Ebert & Posthuma, 2011;Horn, Mavroidis, & Sapir 2010). While the limited number of impact analyses focus on large-N quantitative data (Gansemans, Martens, D'Haese, & Orbie, 2017, in this issue; Postnikov & Bastiaens, 2014) or third country level analysis (Oehri, 2015a(Oehri, , 2015bVan Roozendaal, 2017;Vogt, 2017), we aim to delve deeper into the case of labour rights in the agricultural sector in Peru, considering specific sub-cases such as labour inspection, health and safety at work regulations, and export regimes. Moreover, we analyse the provisions on civil society involvement, as these foresee trade union participation and are seen by the EU as a key mechanism to promote labour rights.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since Peru has struggled to implement (core) labour rights and agriculture is one of the most precarious sectors, this may seem a difficult case where significant EU impact cannot be expected. On the other hand, there is in this case much scope for external actors to achieve progress, and large-N studies (Postnikov & Bastiaens, 2014) suggest that free trade agreements that include labour provisions do improve labour rights. Such studies should be complemented with detailed case studies of specific (sectors within) countries to gain more indepth empirical knowledge of how exactly the labour rights commitments within the trade agreement are being implemented on the ground.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Labour Rights Commitments in EU Trade Agreements: The Case of Peru

Orbie

Putte

Martens

2017

PaG

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While the inclusion of labour rights in European Union (EU) trade agreements has become an 'unobjectionable norm', analyses of their impact have been largely absent from the literature. This article aims to partly fill this gap in existing research by examining the impact of labour rights commitments in the EU-Peru-Colombia agreement, with particular reference to the agricultural sector in Peru. Following a brief background overview of labour rights in agriculture in Peru, we draw up the analytical framework for assessing the impact of these commitments. We discern three distinctive legal commitments and find that they are flexible and conservative, also compared to provisions in other EU trade agreements. Subsequently, we assess the impact of these commitments by analysing to what extent they are being upheld in practice. Empirical evidence from several sources, including field research, shows that the Peruvian government has failed to implement the labour rights commitments in several respects. In the conclusions, we point to the cautious role of the EU, which has scope to monitor Peru's labour rights compliance more proactively.

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Does dialogue work? The effectiveness of labor standards in EU preferential trade agreements

Cited by 88 publications

References 25 publications

Governing Labour Standards through Free Trade Agreements: Limits of the European Union's Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters

Governing Labour Standards through Free Trade Agreements: Limits of the European Union's Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters

International Coercion and the Diffusion of Regulatory Data Protection

The Impact of Labour Rights Commitments in EU Trade Agreements: The Case of Peru

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