Labour Issues: Bangladesh’s duty access to EU in jeopardy
Bangladesh's continued eligibility to duty preferences to the EU, its largest export destination, has come under question because of the labour rights situation.
This came up in the European Commission's assessment report on the EU's Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) programme published on November 21.
The GSP is the EU's main unilateral trade policy to support vulnerable developing countries' exports to the EU conditional on the respect of international standards on human rights, labour rights, environment and climate and good governance.
In recent years, the EU has stepped up its engagement with three GSP beneficiary countries: Bangladesh, Cambodia and Myanmar.
The EU is engaging with the three countries due to the gravity of alleged shortcomings in respecting core human rights and labour rights standards, as testified by reports from the United Nations, the International Labour Organisation and civil society.
"GSP preferences can be removed if beneficiary countries fail to respect core human rights and labour rights," the EU said.
For instance, on 12 February 2020, the EC decided to withdraw part of the tariff preferences granted to Cambodia under the EU's Everything But Arms (EBA) trade arrangement due to serious and systematic violations of the human rights principles enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
For Bangladesh, the EU's key concerns on labour rights are related to: legal obstacles to the right to establish trade unions, elect representatives of trade unions and organise freely trade unions' activities; minimum membership requirements to form a trade union; and the absence of trade unions in the export processing zones (EPZs).
Another area of concern is anti-union discrimination, including violence, harassment, dismissal, and arrest of workers with insufficient investigations and prosecutions of cases.
The EU called for increasing the pace of implementing the commitments on labour rights included in the National Action Plan (NAP) and International Labour Organisation (ILO) roadmap.
Following intense and productive technical discussions with the EU, the labour ministry in September 2021 published the NAP on the labour sector for 2021-2026 with timelines for reforms.
While the Bangladesh Labour Rules and the EPZ Labour Rules, and sub-rules to the Labour Act/EPZ Labour Act have been revised and adopted in 2022, they still fall short of compliance with international labour standards.
The government committed to recruiting 942 additional posts for labour inspectors by the end of 2023 but almost 200 posts of labour inspectors, making up for about one-third of the existing posts, remain unfilled.
The government needs to follow up on its commitments to remediate factories ensuring the safety of workers, including by sending closure notices to factories where necessary as per the NAP.
It should step up its efforts to investigate and prosecute alleged cases of violence and harassment against workers and their representatives.
The EU also has key concerns on human rights related to freedom of expression, both online and offline; freedom of assembly and civil society space; and allegations of torture, ill-treatment, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.
The authorities should also fully implement the recommendations of the Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review, including the abolition of the death penalty, as well as the conclusions of UN treaty monitoring bodies.
"The full compliance with the GSP relevant international conventions should also be seen in the light of the expected future graduation of Bangladesh from LDC status, which would imply moving from the EBA arrangement to standard GSP," the report said.
Under the standard GSP, the low and lower-middle-income countries can get partial or full removal of customs duties on two-thirds of tariff lines on their shipments to the EU.
It is important that Bangladesh can demonstrate that it meets its obligations under the GSP regulation, in particular the labour rights reforms under the NAP and the respect of international human rights standards, the report said.