European Union (EU) Ambassador to Pakistan Raimundas Karoblis on Wednesday said that the country needed to “do more” in terms of fulfilling its commitments under the Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+) ahead of a review.
The status was granted by the EU in 2014, which led to a 108 per cent hike in Pakistani textile exports to the EU due to concessional tariffs. In October 2023, the European Parliament unanimously voted to extend the GSP+ status for another four years until 2027 for developing countries, including Pakistan, to enjoy duty-free or minimum duty on European exports.
The upcoming GSP+ monitoring mission was delayed from June because of the Iran-Israel conflict and will scrutinise Pakistan’s record on 27 international conventions tied to the trade scheme, which grants duty-free access to most Pakistani exports.
In an interview, the EU ambassador was asked about whether Pakistan needed to do more to fulfil the requirements of the scheme, to which he said: “Yes, we are saying that. We are saying that it should be, well, needs to be, to do more.”
He said it would be a periodic monitoring mission that would assess the implementation of all necessary United Nations conventions for the scheme’s application.
“There are human rights, labour rights, environmental issues as well, and good governance. Quite a lot of meetings will be with state institutions, but also with civil society organisations, with human rights defenders, but also with the companies and actually with people who are working in the companies.”
He said a report would subsequently be issued with further recommendations based on the findings of United Nations bodies, since they were responsible for monitoring the conventions.
Outlining areas of concern, he pointed to human rights, the death penalty, blasphemy, forced disappearances, minority rights, women’s rights, child labour and forced labour.
“It will probably be the last monitoring mission of the present GSP+ scheme, because the new scheme will enter into force soon, probably from 2027, and Pakistan will need to reapply in order if it would like to continue with the GSP+ preferences. So it means that the report of the monitoring mission will be one of the most important sources assessing the progress and compliance with Pakistani commitments vis-à-vis the UN.”
The ambassador highlighted that the EU had already identified the main issues that it was asking Pakistan to address.
Separately, Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar discussed the GSP+ scheme with Costa.
The Foreign Office said that called on Costa for a meeting in Brussels, Belgium, in which they “exchanged views on various areas of mutual interest, including GSP+, trade and economic cooperation expansion, and regional and global security developments”.