Trade agreements, labour standards, and political parties. Differences between the u.s. And eu in their approach towards the inclusion of labour standards in international trade agreements
| Autor | Myriam Martins Gistelinck/Bart Kerremans |
| Cargo | Research Assistant at the Institute for International and European Policy/Associate-Professor of International Relations and American Politics at KULeuven |
| Páginas | 236-247 |
Myriam Martins Gistelinck1
Bart Kerremans2
Page 236
As a result of an increasingly competitive global economy, the link between labour standards and international trade agreements has been the object of a controversial political debate both at national and international levels. i
At the World Trade Organization, the linkage of international labour standards to trade has been discussed during several occasions. Despite of the efforts of several governmental and non-governmental proponents of a "social clause" to include these international labour standards to the global trade agenda, the 1996 Singapore Ministerial Declaration and later the Doha Declaration of 2001 somehow consolidated a practice in the other direction.3 The International Labour Organization has been recognized as the only institution competent and capable of dealing with multilateral harmonization of labour standards, also in their connection with international trade.
Unsatisfied with this consensus and unhappy about the reluctance of powerful groups inside the WTO to include some of those international labour standards to the global trade agenda, several industrialized countries usually considered as proponents of a social clause (such as some Member States of the European Union and the US) have been trying to bypass this status-quo by promoting the national internalization of these standards through preferential trading agreements, where they enjoy a more important bargaining power. Not only in the granting of unilateral trade preferences (such as the Generalized System of Prefereces), but also in the negotiation of bilateral trade agreements, the inclusion of a social clause has been a point of attention for both the US and to a lesser extent the EU, as will be described below.
With the relevance of unilateral trade schemes decreasing, due to increasingly lower GATT tariffs and the drive on both sides towards more reciprocal trade relations, the relevance of these bilateral trade agreements for the future governance of labour and trade relations with developing countries can hardly be overestimated. During the last ten years, the US have concluded more than ten bilateral free trade agreements (among others with Jordan, Singapore, Australia, Morocco and several South-and Central-American countries), whereas the EU has successfully finished negotiations of twelve bilateral free trade agreements (mostly with Mediterranean and Southeast European countries, but also with South-Africa, Mexico and Chile). New agreements with important implications in terms of domestic labour concerns, such as the US-Korea-, EU-Korea, EU-India-agreements are waiting to be concluded.
Bilateral trade agreements negotiated by the EU and the US with third partners are of particular interest for the debate on labour standards and international trade as the formulation and the inclusion of these labour rights provisions into the text can vary in many ways. In a first step, this paper will explore the main differences existing between the labour standards included in the bilateral free trade agreements of the United States on the one hand and the European Union on the other hand. In a second and more ambitious step, these differences will be explained while focusing particularly on the role taken by the representatives of the U.S. Congress and the EU's Member States in the negotiations of these free trade agreements.
Starting from the assumption of strong party discipline in European parliamentary democracies and weak party discipline in the United States, we will build a model that puts the aggregative role played byPage 237 political parties in policy-making on trade at the centre of analysis. This model will help us to verify to which extent differences in the internal decision-making context can account for a different attention for labour standards at the negotiation table.
When analyzing or comparing social clauses, two main "components" of labour rights provisions should be taken into account.4 First, an assessment should be made on the differences in the scope of the labour rights provisions. Secondly, the variation in terms of tools of enforcement should be verified.
When referring to the scope of the labour rights provisions, both the type of obligations and the standards used to evaluate the level of commitment of the negotiating parties, should be taken into account. In the United States' bilateral free trade agreements, the 1998 ILO Declaration on Fundamental Rights at Work is used as a basis for the labour provisions included. In short, they cover the following fundamental labour rights: 1. freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining 2. elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour 3. effective abolition of child labour 4. elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. Using these Core Labour Standards as a starting point, these agreements make a reference to a sui generis group of labour standards, named as "internationally recognized labour standards" which also include 'acceptable conditions of work with respect to minimum wages'5. Despite of the mentioning of "internationally recognized labour rights", the level of commitment of the parties is limited to the enforcement of national labour law aimed at protecting these basic labour rights 6 , the choice and the distribution of means of enforcement remaining at the discretion of national governments. Nevertheless, all the agreements except for the North American Agreement on Labour Cooperation (NAALC), contain the explicit obligation not to derogate from existing labour standards in order to increase bilateral trade flows.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the European Commission's Communication on the "Social Dimension of Globalization", adopted in 2004, recognized the inclusion of labour rights as an important element of EU policy on bilateral trade agreements negotiated with third countries.7 Almost all EU bilateral trade agreements contain a chapter or paragraph on "cooperation on social issues" and a clear reference to a few core international labour standards is made in some specific arrangements.8
Contrary to the US' agreements, the standards used to evaluate the respect of these labour rights by the contracting parties seem to be stemming from international rather than national labour law. The standards adopted by the ILO are the main point of reference for the promotion and the development of these labour rights.
Despite of this reference to international labour standards, some authors would argue that the emphasis of the EU is rather on general human rights, included as an "essential element" in all bilateral trade agreements (Clapham and Martignioni, 2006, 291). A serious violation of human rights in theory may allow the EU to terminate or suspend the operation of the agreements (Fierro, 2001, 43).
The differences between the US' and the EU's approach towards the inclusion of labour standards in international trade agreements become more evident when looking at the enforcement mechanisms used when promoting compliance. The US' trade agreements usually provide a "tiered structure" of protection of labour standards, where some labour standards can be the object of more constraining dispute settlement mechanisms and others are merely to be discussed through dialogue-mechanisms at ministerial level. The sanctioning tools in case of non-compliance with certain labour standards also tend to vary according to the agreement concerned. The US-Jordan agreement, for instance, vaguely allows "appropriate and commensurate measures" of any form to be taken as a result of a panel ruling.
Even though many labour activists have argued that these sanctioning mechanisms have proven inadequate and insufficient, formally these arrangements do provide in sanctioning mechanisms that link compliance with labour laws to trade benefits. This does not seem to be the case at all in the EU's trade agreements. The EU has always rejected a sanctions-based approach to labour standards.
In short, a first analysis of the EU's bilateral trade arrangements clearly shows that the focus in terms of labour standards enforcement is rather on...
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