Impact of European Union Tariff Preferences on International Human Rights Treaties

Abstract

Tariff preferences of the EU seek to, inter alia, incentivize third countries through more beneficial scheme of preferences to act in accordance with international human rights standards and other values prioritized by the EU. The aim of this contribution is to assess whether this motivation has real impact on third countries as regards their approach to core international human rights treaties and provide answer to the question whether improved tariff preferences influenced conduct of those countries, as regards accession to the said treaties and expansion of their territorial applicability. Through this assessment, the research seeks to analyse impact the positive conditionality had on acceptance and ratification of human rights treaties by countries that have not showed previous inclination to ratifications without the prospect of obtaining tariff preferences by the EU. The central method is to consider the international human rights treaty ratification years of all states benefitting from the EU regime of tariff preferences. By comparing the time of ratifying the required human rights treaties, and the year in which the respective states became beneficiaries of tariff preferences, the study confirms that, safe for several specific cases, the states receiving tariff preferences had little to no new obligations in terms of ratifying human rights conventions they were previously not bound by.