Date/Time
Date(s): 16/09/2014
Time: 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm
Location
Classroom 7, CUHK Graduate Law Centre
Language:
Admission:
Guest research seminar held by CUHK FACULTY OF LAW & EUROPEAN UNION ACADEMIC PROGRAMME HONG KONG
Presented by our honorable speaker – Professor Annick Masselot Department of Accounting and Information Systems University of Canterbury
Bibliography
Annick Masselot is an Associate professor in law at the University of Canterbury (College of Business and Law). Her research interests focus upon European Union law, comparative law, gender equality and equal treatment, social and employment law, reconciliation between work and family life, pregnancy and maternity rights. She is the author of Reconciling Work and Family Life in EU Law and Policy, (2010) London: Palgrave Macmillan (with E. Caracciolo di Torella). She is a co-editor of Importing EU Norms? Conceptual Framework and Empirical Findings, Springer (forthcoming 2014) Björkdahl A., N. Chaban, J. Leslie and A. Masselot (eds.)
Abstract
The European Union’s (EU) willingness to foster good economic relations with key rising markets in Asia together with the Asian countries’ systematic rejection of the inclusion of gender norms in Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) create a double barrier for the diffusion of gender equality norms (Garcia and Masselot 2014). Thus, ender mainstreaming in FTAs negotiations is almost inexistent. This paper expands the investigation to look beyond gender norms. It aims to assess critically the ability of the EU to pushes for the inclusion of social clauses in FTAs.
The inclusions of social issues in FTAs face internal and external barriers. The mechanisms for negotiating FTAs appear to not be very helpful for the inclusion of social issues. In relation to trade, the EU only commissions Sustainability Impact Assessments (SIAs), which takes place prior to the negotiations of any FTAs. It is in these SIAs that any social clause can be examined, but it is up to each of the companies/consortia who win the bid to decide how much they delve into the social effects of the specific FTA…
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