Human rights as a value of EU trade policy

Abstract

This chapter asks what it means to regard human rights as a value of EU trade policy. Although trade policy has traditionally been seen as a technocratic and essentially non-political policy field, which the Member States have largely relinquished to trade experts who exercise an exclusive EU competence in the common interest, this characterisation has in fact never been wholly accurate. The content of trade deals, from agriculture to anti-dumping, has always been politically contentious, and the very breadth of the discretion allowed by the Treaties to decision-makers has permitted the harnessing of trade policy for a variety of non-trade objectives. The Lisbon Treaty has made explicit the link between trade policy and its system of values and principles which are – according to the Treaties – to guide all external policymaking, as it is tasked with both upholding and promoting its values in its external action. This contribution will approach this question in three steps. First, it assesses the ways in which human rights can be said to have become an objective of EU trade policy, and to what extent this is evidenced in the EU’s external and trade strategies. Then it turns to two different ways in which human rights may have a normative impact as a value of trade policy and analyses some examples of the ways in which trade instruments may be used to promote human rights. And finally, it seeks to identify the legal implications, both procedural and substantive, of the Treaties’ injunction to uphold human rights in trade policy.