Labor Standards in the eu-South Korea Free Trade Agreement

Abstract

The European Union ( eu ) includes clauses on labor rights in free trade agreements with partner countries. One of these clauses was added to the Free Trade Agreement between the eu and South Korea. This article looks at the clause as an attempt of the eu to include labor rights in international trade law. The argument of the article is that the labor clause does include several innovative features which entrench the presence of labor law in international trade agreements. However, the clause remains mainly about political cooperation and struggles to define enforceable legal obligations on states. This is so because of the exceptions in the first part of the clause, the vagueness of the labor rights obligations and the lack of an enforcement mechanism.