We are proud to share that ASSEDEL’s Roundtable Discussion, “EU Trade Agreements and Human Rights” took place on Tuesday, January 20th at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, co-hosted by MEP Catarina Vieira (the Greens/EFA Group ), Member of the INTA and DROI Committees. The event aimed to explore how the European Union integrates Human Rights and democratic principles into its trade agreements, with a particular attention to contested regions including Western Sahara and Palestine. Through a legal and ethical lens, the panel explored the tensions between economic interests and human rights obligations, and examined what these challenges reveal about the European Union’s approach to responsible and value-based trade policy. Four main topics were addressed: the role and effectiveness of human rights clauses in trade agreements, double standards in trade agreements, a case study on the EU-Morocco trade agreement and Western Sahara, and whether ethical trade is a realistic goal or merely a symbolic commitment.
We were honored to host some leading experts in the field.
Balancing Trade and Rights: MEP Catarina Vieira on the EU’s Accountability Challenges in Global Economic Policy
MEP Catarina Vieira opened the panel by explaining that trade is increasingly instrumentalized to advance narrow economic and geopolitical interests, pointing to rising tariff threats, intensifying global power rivalries, and the growing tendency to prioritize economic objectives over civil and human rights.
Turning to the EU context, she criticized the dominance of competitiveness narratives and industry lobbying in shaping trade policy, with a rising number of agreements with partners that have poor human rights records and weak environmental protections. Ms. Vieira also highlighted the contradiction between the EU’s stated commitment to human rights and its practices, pointing to the EU-Israel Association Agreement and the EU-Morocco Trade Agreement as illustrative examples. She further expressed concern over the weakening of internal legal mechanisms, including the Corporate Due Diligence Law, which undermines accountability for human rights abuses in global supply chains.
While acknowledging the importance of trade for the EU’s global role, she stressed that economic engagement must not come at the expense of binding human rights and international law obligations, concluding by underlining the need for accountability and stronger enforcement mechanisms.
Professor Alan Hervé on the Evolution and Challenges of Human Rights in EU Trade Policy
Next, Professor Hervé’s intervention placed the incorporation of human rights into EU trade agreements within its historical context.
The inclusion of human rights clauses has evolved over time, with its origins in the 1990s. Notably, the EU-Tunisia Association Agreement (Art. 2) established that respect for democratic principles and human rights is an essential element. Furthermore, under international customary law, a breach of these essential elements creates the possibility to denounce or suspend Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Following the Lisbon Treaty (2009), the focus shifted towards “Trade and Sustainable Development” (TSD) chapters. These chapters cover social rights and environmental standards, such as references to eliminating child labor.
Professor Hervé further explained that while in some Free Trade Agreements the respect for human rights is an essential element, in others there is no reference to human rights, such as in the EU-UK agreement, which raises critical questions on double standards.
Importantly, he highlights limitations on effectively implementing these human rights clauses in trade agreements. While effective implementation is often hampered by non-binding mechanisms and a lack of robust monitoring mechanisms, it also highly depends on the political will of the European Union to act when human rights are violated in EU trade agreements. Finally, he pointed again to the existence of double standards, asking whether human rights violations are limited to the EU’s trade partners or whether the EU itself is also complicit.
Intervention by MEP Lynn Boylan: Double Standards in EU Trade Agreements
MEP Lynn Boylan further offered a critical perspective on the gap between EU rhetoric and reality, with a specific focus on occupied territories Palestine and Western Sahara. She stresses that while multilateralism and human rights were founding principles of the European Union, in practice the EU has shifted away from upholding human rights in its trade agreements. Today, trade is increasingly driven by profit and geopolitical interests rather than enforcement of international law. Drawing on her roles in the INTA Committee and as Chair of the Parliament’s delegation for relations with Palestine, she underlined how EU trade with Israel is a form of complicity in the genocide in Gaza and the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. It is in clear breach of Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which stipulates that respect for human rights and democratic principles constitutes an essential element of the Agreement. Despite this clause, the EU continues its trade as usual, ignoring both the human rights provisions in the Agreement and the ICJ’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion, which obliges states to abstain from economic or trade dealings that entrench Israel’s unlawful presence.
Turning to Western Sahara and her role as Standing Rapporteur for the Maghreb Region within the INTA committee, Boylan explained how the Commission has similarly ignored Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rulings and the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people by advancing amendments to the EU-Morocco Agreement without consulting the Polisario Front, the rightful movement representing the Sahrawi people in their struggle for self-determination. In an attempt to comply with the Court’s judgment, the Commission proposed to provide funding to the region’s key sectors including water irrigation and energy, while also extending humanitarian aid to the refugee camps in Tindouf, thereby instrumentalizing humanitarian assistance. As funding is not subject to a differentiation principle, it will benefit the Moroccan settlers and companies illegally operating on the territory, and eventually incentivize illegal occupation.
Together, these cases reveal an inconsistent EU trade policy that engages in cherry-picking when integrating human rights. This ultimately undermines the EU’s own credibility and places it in a difficult geopolitical position. Ms. Boylan calls for a fundamental paradigm shift in EU trade policy, arguing that the consistent incorporation of human rights and international law is not only a moral imperative but is also crucial for protecting the EU’s credibility in both the geopolitical and international legal arenas.
Omar Mansour on EU-Morocco Trade and Sahrawi Rights
The intervention of Omar Mansour, Ambassador of the Sahrawi Republic, reminded that Western Sahara is a Non-Self-Governing Territory under UN responsibility and that its people hold an internationally recognized right to self-determination, reaffirmed by the UN, the International Court of Justice, and the CJEU.
He stressed that consultation does not amount to consent and that the EU’s highest court has consistently ruled that no agreement with Morocco can lawfully apply to Western Sahara without the explicit consent of its people. Yet, EU-Morocco trade agreements have exploited Sahrawi resources without proper consent. This benefits external actors while excluding the Sahrawi people and violating their human rights, including their sovereignty over natural resources. From a human-rights perspective this situation is alarming. Permanent sovereignty over natural resources is a legal obligation, and trade agreements that ignore it risk turning economic cooperation into a tool that worsens, rather than remedies, an illegal situation.
Echoing Ms. Boylan, Mr. Mansour criticizes the EU’s inconsistency in enforcing human rights obligations and warns that failure to adhere to the clear rulings of the CJEU not only compromises the Union’s credibility in international law but also weakens its position as a normative actor in global governance.
To conclude, and speaking as a representative of the Polisario front, he urges the European Union to uphold its Court’s rulings, exclude Western Sahara from EU-Morocco agreements without the consent of its people, ensure transparent product labeling, and align its trade policy fully with human rights obligations.
Hélionor de Anzizu (CIEL) on Aligning EU Commerce with Human Rights and Sustainability
Anzizu’s intervention brought a more optimistic dimension to the discussion, explaining that trade can (and should) function not just economically but also as a tool to promote ethical and sustainable practices globally.
She highlighted the EU’s ability to use trade as a diplomatic instrument, using access to trade benefits to encourage the ratification of human rights and environmental treaties. This approach allows the EU to influence partner countries without coercion while responding to growing public demand for ethical supply chains.
She also noted the importance of supply chain responsibility, emphasizing that trade liberalization can improve human rights through employment and economic growth, but unconditional trade risks incentivizing abuses.
She concluded that human rights are a powerful leverage tool in foreign policy, effective only if the EU consistently places them at the core of its trade agreements, aligning commerce with ethical and strategic objectives.
Intervention by Pichamon Yeopantong, Independent Expert on the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights
Ms. Yeopantong’s contribution underscores that trade is not merely an exchange of goods or capital, but a process that profoundly affects people (workers, farmers, Indigenous communities, and families) who are the ultimate rights holders shaped by the terms and impacts of trade agreements. From this standpoint, trade policy is inherently a human rights issue, and its legitimacy depends on whether it upholds or undermines the rights of those affected.
She further reflects on the EU’s efforts over recent decades to integrate human rights into its trade frameworks, while stressing that the decisive challenge lies in implementation and consistency. The inclusion of human rights clauses alone is insufficient if they are not applied rigorously and uniformly. In this context, Ms. Yeopantong cautions that as the EU seeks to strengthen its global competitiveness, this must not become a pretext for lowering standards or marginalizing human rights prospects.
As also highlighted by Ms. Anzizu, Ms. Yeopantong concludes by reaffirming that trade agreements, when genuinely designed and implemented with human rights at their core, can be powerful instruments for positive change and reinforce the EU’s role as a global actor committed to sustainable, and human rights-based trade.
In sum, the ASSEDEL panel discussion highlighted both the potential and the challenges of aligning EU trade policy with human rights. While EU trade agreements increasingly include human rights clauses, their inconsistent implementation, lack of political will to implement them, and the prioritization of economic or geopolitical interests often undermine these commitments, particularly in contested regions like Western Sahara and Palestine. At the same time, the panel offered a constructive vision: when trade agreements are designed and enforced with human rights and sustainability at their core, they can serve as instruments for positive change and strengthen the EU’s credibility as a normative actor on the global stage.
