Of Carrots and Sticks

Abstract The European Union is unique in the sense that it promotes human rights and labour rights through its trade policies and agreements. The EU is the world’s largest economy and it plays an important role in today’s world trade. Through the inclusion of human rights and labour rights clauses in the EU’s common external trade policy and its Generalised scheme of preferences (GSP), the EU seeks to promote and globally transmit the values of human rights and labour rights to its trade partner. To do this the EU mainly uses the GSP scheme of preferential trade and its two connected instruments: positive and negative conditionality. Meaning that the EU in its trade relations with third countries have the choice of using either political dialogue and incentives for further trade which is positive conditionality , or the choice of using economic sanctions and partial preferential withdrawals, being negative conditionality . This research will look specifically at forced labour in Sri Lanka and Myanmar1 and try to evaluate whether the EU’s positive or negative conditionality, in the two cases, are more effective in promoting Labour rights than the other. There are many scholars in the field of political science criticize and argue that EU’s GSP scheme is both ineffective and inconsistent, as well as selective in its use of the conditionalities. This research however, argues that EU’s GSP scheme in terms of positive conditionality actually is more effective in the long-term improvement of labour rights in both Sri Lanka and Myanmar. It therefore concludes that the positive conditionality of the EU’s GSP scheme, even though it at times due the very nature of conditionality came down to a very fine line, has been the more effective instrument in promoting Labour rights in Sri Lanka and Myanmar