The Diffusion of the EU’s Values: Gender Equality and
Social Policy
Annick Masselot - University of Canterbury, New Zealand
[email protected]
Queen’s University, Belfast– School of Law
17 June 2015
Normative Power Europe – Diffusion
(Manners 2002, 2006; Whitman 2013)
Börzel and Risse
2012
Björkdahl et al. 2015
Chaban, Masselot
and Vadura 2015
Encounters
Response
Outcome
Adoption
Adoption at the local level of EU
norms. Local practices comply with
new norms.
Adaptation and contextualizing
external (EU) norms to local
characteristics and local practices
comply
Dominance of local characteristics.
Limited import of EU norms. Few local
practices comply with imported
norms.
Rejection of EU norms and thus local
practices do no comply with EU
norms.
Encounters
between external
(EU) norms and
Adaptation
local practices
Resistance
Rejection
Externalisation of the EU social policy and
gender equality
• Article 21 TEU mandates the European Union (EU) to foster
its values (democracy, the rule of law, social rights, gender
equality, etc.) in its external relations
• Article 8 TFEU – Gender mainstreaming
• Article 9 TFEU – Mainstreaming of social policies and
“externalisation”
“as we pursue social justice and cohesion at home, we should
also seek to promote our values, including social and
environmental standards and cultural diversity, around the
world” (European Commission 2006, 5)
July 2004: ILO-EU Strategic Partnership Framework
Trade > Social aims
EU Trade and social entanglement
C-270/97 Deutsche Post v Sievers: “The economic aims are
now only secondary to the social aims”
Genderless EU-Asia FTAs
• Framework Agreements incl normative concerns in non-binding
terms, but no reference to gender anyway
• Social sustainability clauses: focus on basic workers rights and
labour standards (ILO) – linked to trade advantage
• Failure of gender mainstreaming in DG Trade (no time, no
experience, nobody, gender does not belong to Trade)
• No spillover from Development into trade despite claim of
coherence.
• Symbolic support of the EP
Trade negotiations and social clauses in Asia
• Origin: EU’s General System of Preferences (GSP) regime for
granting trade concessions to developing states (Orbie et al. 2005)
• “free trade versus fair trade debates” (van Roozendaal, 2002, 67)
• Encouraging partners to sign the ILOs four core conventions
• The EU-ASIA relationship was, from the outset, directly linked to the
growing economic and political power of the Asian region
Negative perception of social/gender clauses by
Asian States
Protectionist impulses
Attempt to curtail developing states’ competitive
advantages in certain industries
‘these initiatives on human rights and the
environment could be positive – but they could
also be skewed to give advantages to the West’
(In Elgstrom 2007, 959).
No dispute regarding the values, but the form
and implementation of the values
The role of the European Parliament v. India
Historical
precedents
Precedents explaining the reluctance of the Asian
states to accept social clauses under the General
System of Preferences [Pakistan]
[Sanctions against North Korea and Myanmar]
But under FTA:
- No conditionality
- clauses operate by mutual agreement
- not legally-binding
- mechanism is a dialogue-based with broad
participation of both policy-makers and business
and civil society
Positive outcomes and difference in approach
 Helping to effect change in partners, and
expose unnoticed matters [Malaysia]
 Light touch “dialogue and cooperation”
 Different approaches
conclusions
• EU-Asian States trade negotiations reveal a change in
bargaining power for the EU
• But strategic aims can be compatible with the normative
power argument as the values themselves might not be
contested
• Contestation on the appropriateness of the “exporter” or
the “circumstances” of the export.
• Cost of the EU’s values
• Need to take into account the other in negotiation (Asian’s
states fundamental different conception of economic
governance and relationship between social values and
trade structures).