What is There to Enforce? Multilateral Agreements and Standards in the Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters of the EU Free Trade Agreements

For years, the discussions on the enforceability of the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters of the European Union (EU) Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) focused on the shortcomings of the institutional mechanism. Stakeholders have criticized the collaborative approach where no sanctions were available for breaches, combined with the exclusion from the general Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM) of the FTA. In 2022, the European Commission announced a more assertive approach to remedy these shortcomings. Long-awaited developments in the procedural area raise questions about the substantive content of the TSD chapters. This Chapter aims to provide the needed reality check on to what extent this assertive approach in the procedure is backed up by the substance of the obligations. Through textual analysis, the Chapter scrutinizes multilateral labor and environmental standards articles under all the FTAs with a TSD chapter to date and assesses the commitments to explore the trends in the EU’s approach. It looks at the clarity of the language used; the substance, nature, and the enforceability of the obligations.