Implementation of trade and sustainable development chapters in EU free trade agreements: promoting environmental reforms?

An important way in which the European Union (EU) handles the environment-trade nexus is via Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters (TSD) in its bilateral free trade agreements. These have been criticised for lacking enforcement mechanisms that enable sanctions in the form of a withdrawal of trade preferences. Recently, the EU has adopted a stronger focus on the monitoring and implementation of these chapters. This article assesses the extent to which this ambition has been put into practice. To this end, it conducts a novel documentary analysis of reports and minutes of the TSD Joint Committees for implementation and interview materials, to unpack the modus operandi of these Committees and their approach to environmental issues. The analysis identifies three core functions of the Committees: informative, collaborative and policing. It reveals these Committees mostly serve an informative and collaborative function. Whereas holding parties accountable and policing their implementation of commitments is more prevalent in cases where there are clear power asymmetries between the parties. In addition, TSD Committees are shown to be important fora for exchanges that help to reinforce EU unilateral environment-trade measures, revealing the potential for a more strategic combination of instruments to improve the articulation of the environment-trade nexus.