Bangladesh will have to meet the European Union’s new criteria on human rights to retain its duty-free market access to the bloc as the EU looks to increase accountability and fight impunity, said a top diplomat. 

The EU is scheduled to assess the trade privilege in light of the human rights situation after the bloc became more cautious about it.

“As a major beneficiary of the EBA (Everything but Arms), Bangladesh will have to comply with the new criteria on the human rights to enjoy the benefit on exports,” said Rensje Teerink, head of the EU Delegation to Bangladesh.

Some 61 per cent of Bangladesh’s exports are destined for the EU.

Garment export, which accounts for about 85 per cent of the national sales abroad, rose from $12.49 billion in fiscal 2009-10 to $27.95 billion in 2019-20, according to a recent study by the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

Of the total export, more than 90 per cent are apparel items and 96.4 per cent goods are covered by the GSP scheme.

On December 7, the European Council adopted a decision and a regulation establishing a global human rights sanctions regime.

This will allow the EU to target individuals, entities and bodies – including state and non-state actors – responsible for, involved in or associated with serious human rights violations and abuses worldwide, no matter where they occurred.

“The new regime enables us to impose sanctions regardless of where human rights violations and abuses occur…,” said Josep Borrell, high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security policy and vice-president of the European Commission.

“…without having to create new, country-specific sanctions regimes as we had to do until now. This means we have new tools to increase accountability and fight impunity,” he said in a blog.

The EU can also respond to human rights violations by suspending development aid or withdrawing EBA trade preferences, Borrell said.

“So, Bangladesh needs to protect the EBA facility by complying with the new conditions of human rights,” Teerink said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Star recently.

“The Director-General Trade and DG Employment of the EU have been closely monitoring the human rights situation in Bangladesh to be assessed for the next eligibility.”

The new condition on human rights has been communicated with the ministries of commerce, labour and employment and foreign affairs, she said.

Retaining the trade privilege in the EU is important for Bangladesh because the current economic growth of the country happened significantly riding on the bloc’s generous trade benefit over the last five decades.

Once the country graduates to a developing nation from the least-developed country (LDC) grouping in 2024, Bangladesh will face a lot of competition from other countries in the EU, and there is a possibility of losing the market share due to erosion in preference, the envoy said.

“It is very difficult to say exactly how much Bangladesh would be affected due to graduation,” Teerink said, adding that the EU would remain a major market for Bangladesh even after the graduation.

After the expiry of the current EBA, obtaining the GSP Plus status to the EU by Bangladesh would also be very difficult because of a strong export base of the country to the EU.

For instance, the minimum threshold of import value by the bloc from a GSP eligible country should be less than 7.4 per cent of the total imports from all beneficiary countries during the last three consecutive years on an average. Bangladesh’s share was 24.4 per cent in 2018.

In fact, Bangladesh is the biggest beneficiary of the GSP among all LDCs and is alone utilising 67 per cent of the trade preferential treatment because of higher shipment of apparel items.

In order to qualify for the GSP Plus, a country must meet some criteria.

First, a potential country must be considered vulnerable, according to a document of the European Commission on the EU’s GSP.

A vulnerable country refers to a nation which is not classified by the World Bank as a high-income or upper-middle income country for three consecutive years.

Also, a country must have ratified 27 core international conventions in the fields of human and labour rights, the environment and good governance.

The GSP Plus is a special incentive arrangement for sustainable development and good governance. It slashes tariffs to zero for vulnerable low and lower-middle-income countries.

Bangladesh has ratified almost all major conventions except for a fundamental convention of the International Labour Organisation’s Minimum Age Convention.

In major progress, Bangladesh has amended the labour law, bringing down the threshold of the consent of workers required for the formation of trade unions to 20 per cent from 30 per cent.

“I think that is a good and commendable threshold, but it is not enough,” Teerink said, adding that the threshold would not be able to ensure the freedom of association of workers.

To retain the EBA, Bangladesh needs to follow the labour roadmap recommended by International Labour Organization (ILO).

“The EBA is a such a gift that is quota-free and duty-free access to a country, we have to be sure certain basic human rights and labour are respected while products enter the European Union markets,” Teerink said.

“That is why we have this EBA engagement to see where is Bangladesh on trade.”

If certain basic principles are not respected, there would be unfair competition, she said.

There will be an important meeting about the improvement on labour rights this year.

She said there was no doubt that Bangladesh has been progressing economically despite the fallouts of the Covid-19 fallouts.

“We are incredibly proud as Bangladesh is going forward to be graduated to be a developing country.”

She praised the government’s efforts to roll out the stimulus packages for industries.

Bangladesh’s economy needs to be diversified, and at this moment, it is very much dependent on the ready-made garment industry.

“I hope the government will address it in its Eighth Five-Year Plan,” Teerink said.

The ease of doing business is an important area to improve the business climate in the country, according to the diplomat.

Bangladesh, along with other LDCs, has been pushing for an extension of the current GSP status for 10 more years because of the fallouts of Covid-19.

However, she said she was not much aware of the EU’s position in this regard.

Many local trade experts have suggested signing a free trade agreement (FTA) with the EU.

Responding to this, Teerink said, “At this moment, this is not in the discussion of the DG Trade. Maybe in future, the FTA issue might be discussed.”

The issues of responsible business behaviour by retailers and brands of the EU and the low-price issue of garment items of Bangladesh will be discussed in the next meeting of Sustainability Compact, which was signed between Bangladesh and the bloc in 2013 after the Rana Plaza building collapse.

“Very crucial due diligence issues will be discussed in the meeting as many Bangladeshi garment suppliers have been affected by unusual deferral payments by EU retailers and brands during the pandemic,” she added. 

Turkey is working to open new chapters in its relations with the EU, said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Anadolu news agency reported.

“In 2020, due to our [Turkey’s] problems with some [EU] member states, there were occasional tensions in relations with the EU, which we would not want,” Cavusoglu told a joint news conference in Madrid with Arancha Gonzalez Laya the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation. “However, thanks to the approach of Spain and some other countries, dialogue was chosen instead of tension, and the last summit paved the way for that.”

Cavusoglu added that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will hold a videoconference on Saturday.

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A French MEP and ally of French president Emmanuel Macron has suggested that the European Parliament could still “modify” the Brexit deal, raising questions about whether the trade deal struck at the end of 2020 between the UK and the EU will survive in its current form.

Nathalie Loiseau, France’s former Europe Minister, described in an interview with France24 the Brexit deal that was reached on December 24 2020 as “damage control,” adding that “now it’s time for reality.” Ms. Loiseau said that members of the parliament have “a role in modifying the agreement,” which has yet to be given the legal stamp of approval by parliamentarians in Brussels.

Asked by France24’s host whether the deal can still be changed by members of the European Parliament if there are provisions that they dispute, Ms. Loiseau responded, “it’s a question of political responsibility. Do we want to ruin the whole thing and say there shouldn’t be a deal after all?”

Then, sniping at the parliamentary process in the UK, she elaborated by saying that, “I’m certain we will act responsibly. But that means we go through the text. We don’t vote on it within 24 hours, as the case was in Westminster, which was quite a surprise to me. If you see that things are lacking, or things should be more precise or should be improved you say it.”

Furthermore, in comments that may raise eyebrows in London, Ms. Loiseau went on to say that despite the Brexit deal being active and enforced since January 1 2021, “if we consider that the deal is not perfect, we will be very careful about its implementation, we will monitor that. And, in the future, if things are to be improved or complemented we will say that.”

Notwithstanding those comments, Ms. Loiseau added that the UK and the EU should remain fully engaged in matters of national security and defence, saying that “we are facing the same threats, the same challenges. We have to work together.”

Those comments come on the heels of a scathing attack against Brexit itself by President Macron. On January 1 – the day that the UK-EU Brexit trade deal was provisionally activated – Mr Macron slammed Britain’s departure from the EU as a decision based upon “lies and false promises.”

“The United Kingdom remains our neighbour but also our friend and ally. This choice of leaving Europe, this Brexit, was the child of European malaise and lots of lies and false promises,” said Mr Macron.

Twenty-twenty was the year that saw Xi Jinping’s geopolitical lawlessness and domestic abuses peak. Yet the year ended with a gratuitous European Union giveaway to Beijing in the form of a one-sided, opaque and deceptive investment deal. The Europeans betrayed their American ally, not to mention their own values.

Seven years in the works but put on hold by the pandemic, the deal was rushed to a conclusion by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen. They insist the deal simultaneously upholds “our interests” while “promoting our core values,” as Von de Leyen put it.

But the draft confirms what anyone familiar with China’s behavior over the past decade should know by now: namely, that Brussels sacrificed European values to advance economic interests — marginally.

Yes, the agreement will open up new service industries to European investors, hinder technology transfers and add some transparency to state-run companies and other forms of market-rigging. The EU is hailing these modest concessions from China’s state-capitalist apparatus as major wins, but most of them were already in the offing — and could have been gotten without betraying human rights had the Europeans included the United States as a third partner.

As it is, the deal is bound to disappoint on its own terms, leaving European newcomers to China’s economy complaining about an uneven playing field in the industries that this deal opens up for investment, such as electric vehicles, consumer finance and private hospitals. While China’s giants are allowed to raise capital and litigate their way swimmingly back home, European companies will remain largely hostage in a rigged game, in which the Chinese state’s thumb is laid squarely on the scales.

And for what? The EU is essentially prepared to expose its routine sermonizing about human rights as cheap talk in exchange for fatter margins for carmakers, consumer-goods manufacturers and other largely German multinationals. Meanwhile, the deal does little to counter the Communist regime’s mass enslavement of its Muslim minorities. At best, it will kill ongoing efforts by human-rights advocates and China hawks at the European Parliament to rid the Continent’s supply chains of forced Uyghur labor. At worst, it will embed some new European firms into those same bloodstained value chains.

The official text asks China to comply with a number of International Labor Organization provisions it has already ratified while providing no enforcement mechanisms whatsoever to monitor behavior on the ground. China is at once a founding signatory of the ILO and the world’s capital of modern slavery. Thus, the Europeans’ getting Beijing to ratify additional ILO provisions can only prove meaningless.

The deal comes just as the China-hawkish Trump administration is on its way out the door. President-elect Joe Biden and his foreign-policy coterie, while historically soft on Beijing, have indicated that they prefer a joint, transatlantic approach to China. But the Europeans couldn’t wait to see what the new regime in Washington might mean.

The deal’s boosters claim the EU shouldn’t be held liable for not consorting with an ally whose own China policy hasn’t been stable across administrations. They also argue that getting caught up in the China-US rivalry isn’t in Europe’s long-term interest. But the European duplicity is, or should be, obvious to Team Biden, notwithstanding Democrats’ typical solicitousness for European goodwill.

In the post-COVID world, China’s market-rigging and domestic abuses are unlikely to abate and may even worsen. Against that backdrop, the EU’s race to cut a deal says something — something ominous — about European “strategic autonomy” from America, the buzzword first floated by French President Emmanuel Macron and now flying around Brussels.

Yes, the deal won’t come into force for another year, but two weeks is all the time Biden has to figure out how to react — not an enviable position for the leader of the free world. Biden might take a page from his predecessor. President Trump’s China-skeptic instincts and his distrust of the Europeans appear vindicated: Xi is as bad as he insisted, and Angela Merkel’s Eurocracy has been exposed as a blob of sellouts.

The democratic West needs a single spine. Let’s hope Biden has it.

Jorge González-Gallarza is an associate researcher at Fundación Civismo.

Twitter: @JorgeGGallarza