Strengthening Labour Rights Provisions in Bilateral Trade Agreements: Making the Case for Voluntary Sustainability Standards
| Date | 01 May 2017 |
| Author | Axel Marx,Nicolás Brando,Brecht Lein |
| Published date | 01 May 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12397 |
Strengthening Labour Rights Provisions in
Bilateral Trade Agreements: Making the Case
for Voluntary Sustainability Standards
Axel Marx, Nicol
as Brando and Brecht Lein
Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, University of Leuven
Abstract
Since 2008, most bilateral and regional EU trade agreements contain so-called Trade and Sustainable Development chapters. Such
sustainability chapters typically include commitments to core ILO labour rights and provide specific monitoring mechanisms to
ensure compliance. Several observers however, have voiced concern about the enforcement potential of these provisions in prac-
tice, beyond legal and institutional reforms. As a means to overcome this compliance gap, this article explores how the inclusion
of existing Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) in trade agreements could potentially enhance the monitoring and enforce-
ment of labour provisions in EU trade agreements. Based on experiences captured in a case-study on the functioning of the 2013
EU-Colombia Trade Agreement, we argue that linking VSS to labour provisions in trade agreements could significantly contribute
to rendering these provisions more effective. Linking labour provisions to the monitoring and auditing mechanisms of accredited
but independent VSS, we argue, could help close a regulatory gap, add credibility to the provisions and help overcome capacity
challenges in the implementing countries. In turn, the integration of VSS in trade agreements offers public regulators the opportu-
nity to demand a strengthening of the quality of VSS in terms of their design and procedures.
Public and private actors try to enforce labour rights
through various instruments. Until recently they operated in
different realms and independent from each other. Since
they aim to enforce more or less the same international
labour rights, such as the International Labour Organization’s
Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work
(‘the ILO Declaration’), the debate on possible complemen-
tarities and synergies between private and public initiatives
has emerged. This article aims to contribute to this debate
by analysing how trade agreements, which contain labour
rights protection provisions, can be strengthened in order to
better enforce these provisions.
One can observe a proliferation of bilateral trade agree-
ments which include non-trade objectives, such as the pro-
motion of sustainable development, including the
protection of the environment and of labour rights. The
European Union (EU) is one of the leaders in this respect fol-
lowing the commitments made in the Lisbon Treaty (Damro,
2012; Wouters et al., 2015). EU trade agreements contain
sustainable development chapters outlining which labour
rights should be protected by the contracting parties. These
agreements also stipulate, to some extent, how compliance
with these provisions should be monitored and enforced.
However, several commentators have been sceptical about
the potential of these provisions to actually enforce labour
rights (ILO, 2013; Velluti, 2015). In this respect, closing the
so-called compliance gap seems to be especially challeng-
ing. Many countries comply with the conventions in legal
terms (ratification), but not in practice (Hafner-Burton, 2013).
Hence, there is a growing consensus that the current
provisions are insufficient to really enforce labour rights. The
question thus arises of how these agreements can be
strengthened in terms of their monitoring and enforcement.
In the context of this special issue we look at the role pri-
vate voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) can play in this
context and argue for the integration of VSS in trade agree-
ments. We explore this proposal by focusing on a specific
country as a case study, namely Colombia. This proposal fits
within broader literature on integrating private regulatory
initiatives in public policy to which this special issue con-
tributes. Ponte and Daugbjerg (2015) and Schleifer (2013)
observe the emergence of hybrid forms of governance
which are based on deep, mutual dependence and intercon-
nection between public and private elements. These new
forms of hybrid governance fit within a broader change
towards a new form of transnational governance in which
public and private actors ‘co-regulate’(Lambin et al., 2014;
Schukat et al., 2014).
The article first introduces and discusses the two main pub-
lic and private policy instruments which enforce labour rights,
bilateral trade agreements, and voluntary sustainability stan-
dards. Next, we introduce the case of Colombia and briefly
describe the methodology used for the case study. The main
aim of the case study is to understand the factors that deter-
mine the ineffectiveness of trade agreements to enforce
labour rights and how this can be addressed. Here we argue
that VSS can offer a solution, and briefly discuss VSS in the
context of Colombia. The following section provides a discus-
sion of the implications of the proposal to integrate VSS in
trade agreements. We end with a conclusion.
©2017 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2017) 8:Suppl.3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12397
Global Policy Volume 8 . Supplement 3 . May 2017
78
Special Issue Article
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