DÜNYA İLİŞKİLERİNDE AVRUPA BİRLİĞİ

Since the 1990s, sustainable development has been an established element of EU’s trade agenda, not the least with regard to free trade agreements.

The 2030 Agenda builds on the assumption that liberalising and regulating trade at the multilateral level is the best method to guarantee its contribution to sustainable development. 

The 2030 Agenda identifies trade as an important instrument with which to achieve sustainable development in all its three dimensions: economic, social and environmental. 

The regulation of global trade is indeed primarily based on the system developed under the umbrella of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). 

The nature of trade and trade policies have significantly altered during the last decade. A number of parallel trends can be identified. Firstly, the emergence of global value chains and the geographical fragmentation of production processes have changed the character of trade flows and patterns of exchanges. Secondly, increasing “servicification” and digitalisation require a broadening of regulatory approaches to trade. Thirdly, the growing influence of business on trade patterns and trade rules has led to a certain degree of privatisation of trade regulation. Finally, as the socio-economic and geopolitical significance of trade has become clearer, trade issues have gained unprecedented attention from the media, NGOs and society at large. 

The first sustainable development chapter was included in the 2008 EU-Cariforum Economic Partnership Agreement, and since then such chapters have become a systematic element of all EU trade agreements, and are present in all EU FTAs currently in force.

 In 1999, the Commission’s trade directorate (DG Trade) developed a new, more advanced tool for assessing the sustainability consequences of trade agreements called ‘Sustainability Impact Assessment’ 

The Commission, which plays a strategic and major role in the exercise of the CCP, gave a clear signal that this normative framework is taken seriously, not the least with its 2015 strategy “Trade for All: towards a more responsible trade and investment policy”. 

On the 16th of May 2017, the CJEU delivered its long awaited opinion on whether the EU had the requisite competence to sign and conclude the Free Trade Agreement with Singapore, which belongs to the “new generation” of deep and comprehensive FTAs. 

The most common criticisms of the EU implementation model are

1- Insufficient information about TSD implementation and its tangible results, 

2- There is a need to be more transparent and report comprehensively on the actual activities 

3-  Much more effort should be put into establishing the explicit and direct involvement of the ILO and the MEA institutions in TSD implementation and monitoring. 

4- the lack of a formal structured complaint mechanism, which would make civil society’s role in TSD monitoring more explicit and more effective 

5- The role of the private sector in TSD implementation has still not been sufficiently acknowledged and put into use in the EU FTA context. 

Since the 1990s, sustainable development has been an established element of EU’s trade agenda, not the least with regard to free trade agreements.

Having established sustainability as an indispensable objective of both trade policy and specific trade instruments, the focus has shifted in recent years from inclusion to implementation and enforcement of the EU’s sustainable development commitments. This broadening of the EU’s trade agenda, and inclusion of a growing number of areas and concerns in their trade instruments, raised doubts about competence regarding the new “deep and comprehensive” free trade agreements.

The nature of trade and trade policies have significantly altered during the last decade. A number of parallel trends can be identified. Firstly, the emergence of global value chains and the geographical fragmentation of production processes have changed the character of trade flows and patterns of exchanges. Secondly, increasing “servicification” and digitalisation require a broadening of regulatory approaches to trade. Thirdly, the growing influence of business on trade patterns and trade rules has led to a certain degree of privatisation of trade regulation. Finally, as the socio-economic and geopolitical significance of trade has become clearer, trade issues have gained unprecedented attention from the media, NGOs and society at large. These changes are not the only reasons for the demand to link trade and sustainable development more closely.

The first sustainable development chapter was included in the 2008 EU-Cariforum Economic Partnership Agreement, and since then such chapters have become a systematic element of all EU trade agreements, and are present in all EU FTAs currently in force.

The EU Commission uses impact assessments as a means to facilitate the identification of the sustainability areas that are relevant to trade relationships between the parties either in order to preclude their potentially negative implications or to encourage the positive contribution of increased trade between the parties to sustainable development.

One of the major changes brought about by the Lisbon Treaty, was embedding the EU trade policy into the Union’s overall principles and objectives, in particular those that refer to  external action

In the context of international law enforcement, compliance scholarship has been divided between the proponents of two models: the managerial model and the sanction-oriented model. The managerial model advocates a cooperative, problem-solving approach to promoting compliance with international law. The sanction model, is based on the assumption that in cases where treaties require states to depart significantly from what they would have done in the absence of the treaty, there is a strong incentive for non-compliance, and cooperation can only be ensured by sanctions that encompass a broad range of measures which create costs and remove benefits.

Despite progress in the short implementation period of EU TSD chapters, there has been criticism of the effectiveness of the EU’s trade and sustainability agenda. The main source of criticism is that the current system, where TSD provisions are not linked to the general dispute settlement mechanisms and trade sanctions, does not include the ability to punish partner countries that do not live up to their sustainability commitments.

On the 16th of May 2017, the CJEU delivered its long awaited opinion on whether the EU had the requisite competence to sign and conclude the Free Trade Agreement with Singapore, which belongs to the new generation” of deep and comprehensive FTAs.

The significance of the Court’s statement in paragraph 161 of the opinion should be considered. Paragraph 161 of the Court’s opinion can be read as a reply to the popular criticism of the EU logic of TSD chapters in FTAs, in particular the claim that sustainability provisions in EU FTAs lack enforcement potential as they are not linked to the general dispute settlement systems and the possibility it offers to apply trade sanctions. Nevertheless, it rhymes with the general logic of the EU’s approach to sustainability provisions in FTAs, according to which cooperation and incentive creation should be the primary form of implementation, while any form of sanctioning should be treated as a last resort for particularly grave breaches. It can also be seen as an important message to the public, which has recently been particularly vocal about the shortcomings of a system which does not seem to offer sanctions in cases of serious breaches.