CCME with partners asks EU member states to abandon plans to condition trade
preferences for countries in the global south on their migration and readmission cooperation with the EU.
Read the joint letter here

RE: Delete the reference to readmission as a conditionality in the draft GSP reform 

To: Members of the Council of the European Union 

Dear member of the Council, We are writing in the context of the ongoing trilogue on the reform of the EU’s Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) to urge members of the Council to reconsider and abandon the proposition to condition trade preferences for GSP beneficiary countries on their migration and readmission cooperation with the European Union (EU).

The GSP framework aims at promoting sustainable development in non-EU countries through a system of incentives and disincentives, linked to those countries’ compliance with human rights, including labour rights, and environmental protection standards.

Both under the current GSP system and in the Commission’s proposal for a new one, the Everything But Arms (EBA) and Standard GSP benefits are automatically granted respectively, to least developed countries and low and lower-middle income countries, with no obligation on their part. They can be withdrawn if beneficiaries are found to be in serious breach of key elements of the core human and labour rights conventions (negative conditionality). Only GSP+ is granted to vulnerable developing countries under the condition to ratify and effectively implement a range of international conventions pertaining to human rights, labour, environment, and governance (positive conditionality).

The European Commission’s proposal supported by the Council in Article 19 (1)c represents a sharp departure from the objectives of the EU’s GSP and from EU’s core values. It would effectively make the conclusion and enforcement of readmission arrangements the only positive obligation for the EBA and Standard GSP benefits, while there is still no positive obligation to, for instance, ratify human and labour rights conventions. It would also make readmission cooperation the only conditionality that is not linked to fair trade practice or human-rights based sustainable development... more in PDF