With trade comes responsibility: the external reach of the EU’s fundamental rights obligations

Abstract

Based on International Human Rights Law and EU law, this article endorses a ‘functional’ paradigm of EU’s fundamental rights obligations, exploring whether such obligations extend beyond the EU’s external borders and which positive obligations, if any, they entail. The article argues that the EU’s fundamental rights obligations are founded in a non-territorial standard, as they attach to all ‘functions’ exercised by EU institutions, regardless of their internal or external scope. The paper then addresses the implications of such paradigm for the EU’s human rights obligations in the context of its Common Commercial Policy, focusing in particular on trade agreements, investment protection agreements and on the EU’s duty to regulate corporate actors.