On December 30, 2020, leaders from China and the EU announced they had agreed in principle on the text of a long-awaited Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), after seven long years of negotiation. Meeting the end-of-2020 goal was no mean feat; as late as September 2020, after a China-EU virtual meeting, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen cautioned that “a lot – a lot – still remains to be done” on the CAI, adding, “China has to convince us that it’s worth having an investment agreement.”

But it’s too early for negotiators to celebrate even now. The text of the CAI still needs to be finalized and undergo a legal review. Then it will have to be approved by the European Council, the heads of government of the EU’s member states. Finally, the investment deal will face what may be its steepest hurdle: approval by the European Parliament. In addition to geopolitical concerns about the implications for transatlantic ties, the investment pact is also coming under heavy fire from those concerned about China’s human rights abuses.

The EU and China are “two parties with opposing ideologies,” according to Valbona Zeneli, the chair of the Strategic Initiatives Department at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. “To belong to the EU, countries must pursue a values ideology that agrees to values supporting human dignity, human rights, freedom, democracy, equality, and rule of law. China, or more appropriately the CCP, is a one party totalitarian government.”

She adds, “In this regard, the CAI is in reality a deal between the EU and the CCP.  Semantics, some would say, but this is an important point that must factor into every decision.”

Those concerns were given voice in a open letter to members of the European Parliament (MEPS), von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, and other top EU officials. The appeal, signed by 36 civil society organizations, warned that the CAI, in its current form, “sends a signal that the European Union will push for closer cooperation [with China] regardless of the scale and severity of human rights abuses carried out by the Chinese Communist Party.”

The letter urges the European Union to add a binding human rights clause to the CAI and refrain from from entering into the agreement until China ratifies core human rights conventions like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Labor Organization conventions on forced labor and the right to organize.

The groups signing the letter ran the gamut from general human rights activism (the Human Rights Foundation and International Federation for Human Rights) to groups specifically advocating for Uyghurs and Tibetans (the Uyghur Human Rights Project, World Uyghur Congress, and International Campaign for Tibet) and trade unions (the European Trade Union Confederation and International Trade Union Confederation).

The 36 groups that signed the appeal are far from alone in raising their concerns. The European Parliament (EP) itself passed a resolution on EU trade policy on November 26, 2020, arguing for the “importance of including an ambitious chapter on trade and sustainable development to protect human rights, including core labor standards.” The resolution also “stresses that EU trade and investment relations require full respect for human rights.” It passed overwhelmingly, 593 votes to 50 (with 50 abstentions).

On December 17, just two weeks before the CAI was agreed upon, the EP passed a resolution specifically condemning “the government-led system of forced labor, in particular the exploitation of Uyghur, ethnic Kazakh and Kyrgyz, and other Muslim minority groups, in factories both within and outside of internment camps in Xinjiang.” The EP “[d]eeply deplores the ongoing persecution and the serious and systematic human rights violations that amount to crimes against humanity,” the statement added. With specific regard to the CAI, the resolution said the deal “must include adequate commitments to respect international conventions against forced labor.”

The text of the deal, however, only includes a commitment from China “to make continued and sustained efforts to ratify the ILO fundamental Conventions on forced labor,” according to the EU read-out. And despite the EU’s insistence that it secured “binding commitments” from China on the subject of labor rights, Chinese experts are extremely skeptical. “Can you imagine China with independent labor unions?” Shi Yinhong, a professor at Renmin University and adviser to China’s State Council, rhetorically asked the Financial Times. “Forced labor also relates to Xinjiang, so that’s another ‘no’ for China.”

“It is already clear that the outcome of the negotiations misses an essential criterion set by the European Parliament,” Reinhard Bütikofer, the chairman of the EP’s China delegation, told the South China Morning Post. “When it comes to forced labor in China, the EU Commission is satisfied with superficial lip service.”

Another major concern is China’s crackdown in Hong Kong. The mass arrest of 53 pro-democracy activists and politicians just a week after the CAI was announced may have dealt a fatal blow to the prospect of ratification by the European Parliament by highlighting in the brightest neon the pre-existing concerns.

“If ratified, the CAI will be a de facto recognition that it is acceptable to conduct a wide range of business activity with a totalitarian communist government that has proven itself capable of violating human rights with exacting precision and no apology,” Zeneli argues.

“More importantly, these transgressions have occurred while the CAI was being negotiated…. Essentially, this rewards the CCP and encourages its bad behavior.”

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been making similar points. MEP Guy Verhofstadt pointed out on Twitter that the crackdown in Hong Kong has “only intensified since the EU-pact with China.” He added, “The EU cannot accept this! If the situation of the #Uighurs, #HongKong and Tibetans won’t change, the EP will not ratify.”

Fellow MEP Engin Eroglu had a similar message: “The @Europarl_EN should not ratify the #CAI investment deal until #China proves it can improve the situation of #Uyghurs, Hong Kongers and others!”

MEP Bernd Lange, chair of the EP’s international trade committee, expressed skepticism as well. “Trade does not take place in a vacuum,” he said in a tweet quoting a story on the Hong Kong arrests. “These actions mark a violation of the spirit of the #EU-#China investment deal sustainability commitments. This is clearly not a basis for constructive cooperation.”

As Lange added in a later tweet: “[W]hat was true in the past will also hold true for the #EU-#China investment agreement: there are no built in majorities for trade deals in the @Europarl_EN.”

This week Ursula von der Leyen signalled the EU’s desire to lead the world in the fight against global deforestation. But if the key drivers of deforestation aren’t addressed, progress will remain limited, writes Julia Christian.

Julia Christian is Campaign Coordinator at the forests and rights NGO, Fern.

Until recently, European Union policies to protect forests and biodiversity were a niche concern, preoccupying few outside the world of green politics.

But with increasing awareness that forests are a key natural defence in the climate emergency, and consumers’ growing realisation that their supermarket shelves are laden with goods which destroy forests, forest protection is being talked about in EU corridors of power more than ever.

Further evidence of this came on Monday, when the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outlined a bleak vision of the future if we fail to act. Speaking at the One Planet Summit in Paris, she described a world of declining physical and mental health; of more poverty, wars and pandemics.

“When we lose forests, we don’t ‘just’ lose green space or natural habitat,” she said. “We lose a key ally in our fight against climate change. When temperatures rise and nature disappears, we suffer more natural disasters and zoonotic diseases… if we don’t urgently act to protect our nature, we may already be at the beginning of an era of pandemics. But we can do something about it. It needs concerted global action and local sustainable development.”

High ambition

In a speech of just over 900 words, von der Leyen outlined her ambitions for the road ahead. Much of this was laudable: the first time we have seen such a detailed vision for forests from a European Commission president. But there were areas of potential concern.

Von der Leyen’s pledge to protect 30% of land and sea in Europe is praiseworthy. The latest alarming research shows that Europe retains less than 1% of its primary forests, and civil society groups in Romania, Slovakia and Poland, where primary forests are in peril from industrial and illegal logging, are calling for strict protections.

But a note of caution about applying this to the rest of the world: rigorous protections can work in Europe, but in tropical forested countries where forest communities lack rights to land, strict protection has all too often led to violence against local communities.

By contrast, evidence shows that recognising Indigenous and forest communities’ rights is the best way to ensure forests are protected in the long run. When negotiating global nature protection goals at the upcoming UN biodiversity summit, the EU must ensure that forest community land rights are respected. Similarly, EU support for restoration initiatives in the Global South could cause harm unless they place the recognition of community rights – and the restoration of forest health and biodiversity – at the centre.

Tree-planting

Her speech also contained a reference to the EU’s commitment (in its biodiversity strategy) to plant 3 billion trees in the EU by 2030. Historically, tree planting schemes have tended towards managed monoculture plantations, which have little benefit for the climate or biodiversity. Greater benefits can be achieved by restoring our existing degraded forests. What’s more, planting a spectacular number of trees will make little difference if we don’t stop the incentives that currently lead to them being razed, particularly the Renewable Energy Directive, which encourages burning wood for energy.

Von der Leyen’s reiteration of the EU commitment to propose “new legislation [this year] to minimise the risk of products linked to global deforestation being placed on the EU market” was welcome (and something that Fern has called for, for seven years).

This is a potential game-changer in ending the EU’s complicity in global deforestation. It’s essential that any legislation includes not only deforestation, but human rights, since – as seen most recently in Brazil – land grabs are intimately linked to deforestation. The legislation must contain sufficient enforcement measures to ensure it works. And it will not work on its own – it must be accompanied by partnerships with producer countries to tackle the supply side drivers of deforestation.

The President’s statement “it is our duty to ensure that our Single Market does not drive deforestation in local communities in other parts of the world” omitted, perhaps significantly, any reference to the role that EU free trade agreements play in this. The Mercosur deal (with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) is the most eye-catching example,  but across the board, the raft of deals the EU has signed in recent years lack enforceable provisions to stop them fuelling deforestation and rights abuses. This needs to change.

President von der Leyen’s speech is a watershed in the EU’s commitment to protect forests: this is the first time that a Commission President has spoken so extensively and in such detail about deforestation, and an unequivocal sign of the EU’s desire to be the global leader on deforestation.

But for the President’s vision to be realised, it must focus not only on headline-grabbing goals, but on tackling the major drivers of forest loss – in particular EU trade policy, EU bioenergy policy, and the fragility of community rights over forest land. If these issues are ignored, we can plant all the trees we want, but the forests around us will keep burning.