Leverage in trade agreements and linkages - challenges to the trade and rights linkages

Drawing on international relations' understandings of power and leverage in negotiations, this chapter highlights the limitations on the EU's ability to leverage its market power in trade negotiations to extract human right and social clauses, even with structurally weaker actors. A comparison of recent EU trade agreements reveals subtle differences in how the essential human rights clause has been incorporated into agreements. This enables an exploration of how the characteristics of the subjects of EU leverage (relative economic significance to the EU, competitiveness, and geoeconomic positioning) affect EU leverage in negotiations. This chapter posits that the relative erosion of EU market power (accelerated by Brexit), the approach of other powers, and the time-pressures have pushed the EU into a position of accepting some dilution of its preferred values to sign timely agreements that overall support its commitment to liberal rules-based trading.