The EU GSP: a preference for human rights and good governance? The case of Myanmar

Beke, Laura; Hachez, Nicolas

doi:10.4337/9781783477760.00015

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Our goal is thus to assess whether the EU's GSP system could be an effective tool to promote NTPOs in developing countries. This is different from assessing the effectiveness of its application so far, which is the focus of several earlier studies (Orbie and Tortell, 2009;Beke and Hachez, 2015;Velluti, 2016). 37 35 With respect to economic NTPOs (economic and social rights, environmental protection), the TSD chapters 'are not primarily designed as a form of conditionality but rather as a safeguard to ensure that trade liberalization does not lead to deregulation or to the erosion of labor rights or environmental standards' (Portela, 2018).…”

Section: Conditionality In the Eu Gsp Schemesmentioning

confidence: 90%

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The Pursuit of Non-Trade Policy Objectives in EU Trade Policy

et al. 2021

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The European Union (EU) often conditions preferential access to its market on compliance with Non-Trade Policy Objectives (NTPOs), including human rights and labor and environmental standards. In this paper, we first systematically document the coverage of NTPOs across the main tools of EU trade policy: its (association and non-association) trade agreements and Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) programs. We then discuss the extent to which the EU can use these tools as a ‘carrot-and-stick’ mechanism to promote NTPOs in trading partners. We argue that, within trade agreements, the EU has limited scope to extend or restrict tariff preferences to ‘reward good behavior’ or ‘punish bad behavior’ on NTPOs, partly because multilateral rules require members to eliminate tariffs on substantially all trade. By contrast, GSP preferences are granted on a unilateral basis, and can thus more easily be extended or limited, depending on compliance with NTPOs. Our analysis also suggests that the commercial interests of the EU inhibit the full pursuit of NTPOs in its trade agreements and GSP programs.

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Section: Conditionality In the Eu Gsp Schemesmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Conditionality In the Eu Gsp Schemesmentioning

confidence: 93%

The Pursuit of Non-Trade Policy Objectives in EU Trade Policy

et al. 2021

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“…By adopting this framework, the emphasis is on tracing the 'export' of EU market rules and civilian norms through trade policies, including GSP. Beke and Hachez (2015) suggest that the withdrawal of EU trade preferences from Burma/Myanmar between 1997 and 2013 failed to induce the desired political changes. Meanwhile, Yap (2015) argues that the threatened withdrawal of EU market access perks nudged Bangladesh to adopt stricter labour protection standards following the Rana Plaza tragedy in 2013.…”

Section: Generalised Scheme Of Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decolonising EU Trade Relations with the Global Souths?

Alcazar III,

Nessel,

Orbie

2023

JCER

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That the European Union’s common commercial relations with ex-colonies and more broadly the ‘tiers monde’ now rest variously on benevolence, depoliticised practices, equal partnerships and values fuels reigning foundational myths about the EU in global politics. Efforts to disrupt these received presuppositions have come from interpretivist, postcolonial, post-development, post-structuralist and other heterodox research traditions. Yet the academy has been largely impervious to knowledges that genuinely question and subvert, in both theory and praxis, Eurocentric ways of seeing the world and understanding the EU as a ‘benevolent’ trade actor on the world stage. In dialogue with existing heterodox approaches, this article asks how we might puncture the coloniality of dominant knowledge regimes about EU trade relations vis-à-vis the global souths, i.e., peoples and places that the EU deems peripheral and, as such, in need of trade-related interventions in the name of development. To this end, we propose different ‘subject-positions’ with which to unthink and rethink our ways of knowing EU trade policy and the Eurocentrism lurking behind it by turning to decolonial thought. We borrow heavily from the work of Meera Sabaratnam whose ‘decolonising strategies’ in studying world politics we attempt to exemplify through a critical interrogation of the canonical scholarship around three distinct ‘policy worlds’ of EU external trade relations: Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) and Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters in free trade agreements. Finally, we think reflexively about the decolonial option and the ruptures it triggers as to what EU trade policy is and the colonial logics sustaining ‘normative’ and ‘geopolitical’ narratives on/by the EU as a trade power.

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EU Human Rights as a Framework for Foreign Policies

Kube¹

2019

EU Human Rights, International Investment Law and Participation

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The EU GSP: a preference for human rights and good governance? The case of Myanmar

Cited by 5 publications

References 5 publications

The Pursuit of Non-Trade Policy Objectives in EU Trade Policy

The Pursuit of Non-Trade Policy Objectives in EU Trade Policy

Decolonising EU Trade Relations with the Global Souths?

EU Human Rights as a Framework for Foreign Policies

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