Achieving Sustainability through Bilateral Trade Agreements: A Comparative Legal Study on Sustainable Development Provisions in the EU’s Bilateral Trade Agreements

Abstract: Following the current global wave of sustainable development, the EU has been playing a leading role in reshaping the global trade landscape with its ambitious sustainable trade toolboxes. Particularly, the evolvement of sustainable development provisions in EU’s Bilateral Trade Agreements (BTA) have sparked growing discussions and debates in the legal arena. This study aims to analyse the role of these provisions in delivering sustainability to trading partners by comparing several selected EU’s BTAs, in particular with South Korea, Mercosur, and New Zealand. To achieve this goal, the study lays down a contextual argument on the implications of EU’s sustainable trade policies on its bilateral trade agreements and develops a legal analytical matrix with parameters consisting of social provisions, environmental provisions, institutional frameworks, and dispute settlement mechanisms. The study finds that sustainable development provisions in the EU’s BTAs bind the parties to implement sustainable development principles, with commitments varying among agreements based on different characteristics, priorities, and challenges. While all agreements have similarities in setting out core commitments related to international labour and environmental standards, the level of obligations significantly differs. The study also identifies evolving legal challenges and proposes recommendations to overcome them. In general, despite its limited extent in demonstrating a constructive model, sustainable development provision is a step in the right direction in developing a mechanism in pushing for a more sustainable trade practice.