Following the Savar tragedy, the European Union (EU), Bangladesh’s largest trade partner, has expressed deep concerns over the labour conditions in Bangladesh, saying that appropriate actions would be taken including through the GSP to motivate responsible management of
supply chains involving developing countries.“It is almost one week since the collapse of an illegally-constructed building containing garment factories in Savar, just outside Dhaka in Bangladesh, on 24 April,” said Catherine Ashton and Karel de Gucht, EU senior representative for foreign affairs and security policy and EU commissioner for trade, respectively, in a joint statement on Tuesday.
“The sheer scale of this disaster and the alleged criminality around the building’s construction is finally becoming clear to the world. We are deeply saddened by the terrible loss of life. This tragedy is all the more shocking as it follows textile factory fires in Bangladesh in recent months which have killed more than a hundred workers,” it said.
The statement also said, “As Bangladesh’s largest trade partner, the EU is very concerned about the labour conditions, including health and safety provisions, established for workers in factories across the country. In the light of all these events, the EU calls upon the Bangladeshi authorities to act immediately to ensure that factories across the country comply with international labour standards, including the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions.”
“The EU is presently considering appropriate action through the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP). Bangladesh currently receives duty-free and quota-free access to the EU market under the ‘Everything But Arms’ scheme through the GSP, in order to incentivise responsible management of supply chains involving developing countries,” it said.
The EU is willing and ready to assist the Bangladeshi authorities in any way it can to meet the required international standards, said the statement.
“At the same time, we continue to encourage European and international companies to promote better health and safety standards in garment factories in Bangladesh, in line with the internationally recognized Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) guidelines,” it added.
Meanwhile, according to a report by Reuters on Wednesday, if Bangladesh were to lose its preferential trading status with Europe over conditions in its garment factories, it could face hundreds of millions of dollars in duties and limits on access to its largest trading partner.
EU officials said on Wednesday they hoped the threat of action would be enough to make Bangladesh change its laws to secure a market which formed over a quarter of the south Asian state’s USD 40.5 billion annual exports in 2011. Any action would likely take more than a year.
“This is about firing a shot across the bows of Bangladesh to get them to engage on the issue,” an EU official told Reuters. “We want to turn up the diplomatic heat on them and get them to sit down and discuss this with us.”
-with The Independent input
