Samantha Velluti's book presents a comprehensive analysis of the role of the European Union (EU) in promoting human rights and international labour standards in its external trade relations, highlighting the EU's ‘norms versus interests’ or ‘principles versus practice’ contrasts. The first chapter sets out the book's aims, significance, methodology and structure. Chapter 2 explains the basics of the EU's policy, with its objective of furthering trade liberalization while concurrently promoting non-commercial objectives through trade. This chapter familiarizes the readers with concepts such as managing globalization, deep trade agreements, WTO-plus commitments etc. The 2009 Treaty of Lisbon has broadened the scope of one of the EU's most important external relation policies, the Common Commercial Policy and in this context, the third chapter analyses the changes brought about by the treaty with regard to the competences of the EU. A separate section under this chapter provides an up-to-date analysis of the impact of Brexit on the EU's international trade agreements and the UK's legal status in relation to these agreements.
Chapter 4 of the book is contributed by Francesca Martines. She elucidates the concept of conditionality and provides an overview of the EU's different conditionality mechanisms. Velluti takes this discussion further in the fifth chapter wherein she presents an interesting analysis of the kinds of trade measures that have been taken by the EU in response to labour rights violations in countries such as Belarus, Myanmar/Burma, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh etc. Apart from critically analysing the effectiveness of the EU's Generalized System of Preferences scheme in promoting human rights, this chapter incorporates discussion on the EU Free Trade Agreements, the “new generation” of which explicitly include provisions on labour. In Chapter 6, the author examines the EU's external human rights obligations from the perspective of international law and EU law. Accordingly, the chapter focuses on ‘extraterritoriality’ and the ‘duty of due diligence’ under international human rights law. It also looks at relevant treaty provisions and the decisions of the Court of Justice of the EU, thus providing a complete picture of the legal status and the enforcement of human rights obligations of the EU in its external trade relations. Further, the author offers a revisited notion of the principle of implied powers which would facilitate the interpretation of the Treaty of European Union in such a way as to infer “functional” human rights competence to the EU. The final chapter of the book is co-authored by the author, Samantha Velluti and the contributor, Francesca Martines, and addresses the inconsistences and limitations of the EU social conditionality.
The scope of the book is limited to examining the EU's policy of using trade as a tool for promotion of labour and human rights in non-EU countries. The discussion seems one-sided as the book does not sufficiently consider the ground-level issues in non-EU developing countries, nor the concerns raised by these countries with regard to the EU's practice of social conditionality. Nevertheless, the book makes a novel contribution as it builds on the existing literature to provide new and detailed insights into the active role played by the EU in promoting normative objectives through trade. Velluti indeed deserves appreciation for her insightful research in this fast-moving field.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
