Implementing Sustainability Provisions in the EU’s New Generation Free Trade Agreements: How Much Can Weak Commitments Do?

The European Union has been one of the most active players in negotiating and concluding free trade agreements with an extensive network of trade partners from all continents. Whether partnering with developed or developing economies, the EU has been consistent in ‘exporting’ its non-trade values – such as sustainable development, good governance, and human rights – to its trading partners through FTAs. Using examples of the EU’s new generation of FTAs, we explain that even if the EU is ambitious in exporting a wide range of non-trade values, these provisions are mostly hortatory in nature, and thus effectively leave implementation to parties’ goodwill because the sanctioning mechanisms are not always provided. However, evidence from some of the EU’s FTAs shows that, despite the soft nature, sustainability commitments have been taken seriously in some cases in the implementation process.