The EU Position on Worker Rights and Trade

 
The July 24th edition of "Bridges," a list-serve maintained by the Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy (IATP) in Geneva, reported on new EU initiatives for worker rights and trade as part of the EU-US initiative to create an agenda for a new WTO-administered trade round at the Ministerial Conference in Dohar, Qatar this November. The EU position continues to place the International Labor Organization (ILO), not the WTO, at the forefront of action on these issues. The EU supports the idea for greater coordination between the ILO and the WTO and other multilateral bodies, but its suggestion that a formal committee provide a permanent link on this issue to the WTO process has been rejected by developing countries.

This clarification and deepening of the EU's position comes at a time when Latin American countries, especially the MERCOSUR member states, are trying to accelerate progress in free trade negotiations with the EU as a counterweight to the FTAA negotiations. This most recent clarification might help, but many other points could hold up a final agreement both at the Latin American and WTO levels. The most immediate impact of the EU position could be to strengthen the "tool box" approach of the US Trade Representative in providing viable alternatives to the issue of trade sanctions and worker rights conditionality in the FTAA and other trade pacts.

The Europeans cautioned against attempts to include labor standards in multilateral trade agreements and to enforce them through trade sanctions. The communication also rejected using core labor standards to call into question the comparative advantage of low-wage developing countries. It stressed the central role of the ILO, insisting that it remain the principal forum for discussing the issue (the mandate of the ILO's Working Party on the Social Dimension of Globalization was expanded last month; see BRIDGES Weekly, 26 June 2001).

According to the Bridges list-serve, "the Commission also proposed the creation of a high-level international dialogue with the participation of the ILO and the WTO as well as development organisations such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). During the WTO's Third Ministerial Conference in Seattle in 1999, the EU proposed the establishment of a joint ILO/WTO Standing Working Forum on Trade, Globalisation and Labour. This idea was opposed at the time by several developing countries as well as by the US, albeit for different reasons (see BRIDGES Daily Update on the Third Ministerial Conference, 30 November 1999)." In the Western Hemisphere, it was just this type of dialogue that was resisted by several nations, led by Brazil, at the recent OAS Labor Ministerial preparatory meeting in Miami.

Despite the international refusal to support any type of worker rights and trade linkage, the EU wants to strengthen the link in its trade relations between preferential access to the EU market and labor standards in developing countries. The next step is to see the reactions to this pronouncement by European and international NGOs and labor unions.