(31 January 2017) Speakers and attendees at the ETUC, ITUC and Actionaid workshop held in Brussels on the 24th of January concluded that the EU could better support job creation in developing countries. The workshop titled ‘Can the EU better support job creation in developing countries?’ grappled with a range of issues including development, trade, climate change, wealth distribution and the quality of jobs created. This workshop was timely in that the EU’s Aid for Trade (AfT) programme will be revised in the coming months.
Aid for Trade provides assistance to support partner countries' efforts to develop and expand their trade as leverage for growth and poverty reduction. However a number of participants indicated that developing countries were too often trapped in low-added value economic development. Trade agreements also contained provisions that made economic nationalism or local development more difficult (e.g., provisions restricting state owned enterprises or the ability to set local requirements).
Cecilia Malstrom, European Commissioner for trade stressed the benefits of trade agreements, when she addressed participants. She insisted that the EU was limited in what it could do in terms of exporting its social model. The Commissioner noted that Governments had responsibility for (re)distributing the benefits of trade, and assessing the trade-offs between economic development and environmental protection. EU Member States have shown a reluctance to go further regarding enforcing the EU’s sustainable development chapters in trade agreements, even when existing provisions are proving to be ineffective, for example in the EU–Korea agreement.
The workshop’s discussion underlined the need for more pressure to be exerted in order to make the links between trade, aid and sustainable development; and to insist that trade contributes to development by providing more resources to combat poverty and create decent jobs and does not undermine the role of public services.
The Commission unveiled its proposals for a renewed European consensus on Development on the 22nd of November last year. It also set out plans for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in relation to the outcomes approved at the Rio+20 Conference. EPSU and PSI are critical of the SDGs supporting framework (see PSI webpage on 2030 Agenda) that places too little weight on good governance and public investment in public goods and public services.
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