Free Trade Agreements and Responsible Business: Examples from the EU’s Bilateral Agreements in East and Southeast Asia

Abstract

<p>This chapter analyses the impact of free trade agreements on responsible business in Asian<br />emerging economies. We review the origins of the discussion on sustainable development in<br />international negotiations and conventions, and explore the EU’s three FTAs with Asian<br />countries, i.e. South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam with respect to references to corporate<br />social responsibility and sustainable development. Our main finding is the gradual evolution<br />of the EU’s FTAs towards including more explicit clauses on environmental and labour<br />issues. This conforms to the idea of multilateralizing regionalism, i.e. that issues may be first<br />agreed in bilateral or regional FTAs and then gradually transferred to the multilateral level.<br />Despite not incurring direct impacts on firms, this may serve as an institutional push for<br />countries to address the need for responsible business in national legislation.<br /></p>