European Foreign Affairs Review
Volume 29, Issue 3 (2024) pp. 331 – 360

https://doi.org/10.54648/eerr2024015

Abstract

In the last two decades, human, labour, and environmental provisions have become a core pillar of European trade policy (TP) through the inclusion of Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD). They were widely criticized because of mismatched and limited provisions, lacking civil society inclusion, institutional and legal weakness, which raises the question if its involvement in national policy and actions are suitable and proportional to the benefits for partner countries. This article investigates how the chapters possibly exercise indirect control by looking at neocolonial characteristics. A selection of communications from the European Commission will be subjected to a post-structuralist discourse analysis and a framework based on three identified modes of neocolonialism and their characteristics.

This research shows how ‘sustainable development’ has become an empty signifier to which a wide range of geopolitical, neoliberal, and value-loaded elements are connected by logics of equivalence. Sustainable development becoming more central has enabled neocolonial practices to become deeper and more prevalent, with neoliberalization, superior knowledge, asymmetric trade relations, and asymmetric diplomatic relations being the most prominent. Finally, it concludes that this vagueness around ‘sustainable development’ serves as a tool to preserve the European Union’s (EU’s) economic power, resulting in an increasing indirect control over its partners.

Extract

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