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Abstract
This article examines European Union (EU) performance by assessing its effectiveness in the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the relevance of the EU to its major stakeholders between 1992 and 2010. Making a distinction between technical and political domains, it maps the ILO policy-making structures in which the EU must operate. In the technical domain, it argues that although the EU has been effective in uploading its policy preferences into ILO labour standards, the relevance of collective EU representation to the member states has marginally increased since 1992 by comparison to the previous 20 years. In the political domain, there has been considerable progress enhancing EU performance in promoting compliance with labour standards within the ILO’s monitoring system, although the increase results more from higher relevance than from greater effectiveness. It also argues that the institutional environment of the ILO, constituted by its rules, norms and practices, plays an important role in assessing EU performance. Doing so calls into question established assumptions about EU behaviour in international organisations.
Notes
1. European Science Foundation: 09-ECRP-015, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science.
2. This article is informed by numerous interviews with officials from EU member states, the ILO, and EU institutions over many years, most recently in Brussels, 23–24 May 2011.
3. This explains why instruments are so seldom rejected. In the last 40 years, only the 2005 fishing sector convention was rejected (by one vote out of a total of 436).
4. The reason for this is a dispute over who should represent the member states when discussing technical issues related to community competency in relation to C170 (Cavicchiolo Citation2002). It was resolved by ECJ Opinion 2/91 (Citation1993), which ruled that member states must represent the European Community in areas of common competency, not the Commission.
5. The interventions – one in the case of C177 (Home Work 1996) and two in the case of C185 (Seafarers Identity Documents 2003) – were made in the preliminary general discussion. In C182 (Child Labour), the EU only spoke during the first drafting meeting. In C182 and C185, EU member states negotiated as part of a larger group of IMEC states.
6. The 14 conventions had accompanying recommendations drafted at the same time and in this survey are treated as one negotiating process (C185 and MLC excluded). Of the six others, the EU made significant contributions in R189, R194, R198, and R200.
7. This figure includes the 2005 vote on a fishing convention which failed, and its associated recommendation (R196) that passed but has been removed from the list of recommendations on the ILO website (ILO n.d.b.).
8. In technical votes, the EU majority position is always to voting in favour of the instrument. Since 1992, the UK has voted against six instruments (C175, C177, C179, R184, R186, R187) and abstained seven times (C178, C180, C183, R182, R191, R198); Germany has voted against once (C177); France has abstained three times (C175, C178, R185); three states have abstained twice (NL: C186, R197; Portugal: C175, R182; Luxembourg C181, R188) and the Czech Republic once (R198).
9. Non-coherent voting after common EU representation took place in the following instruments: (C181 & R188), (C183 & R191), (C187 & R197) and (R198).
10. ‘Participation’ is defined here as a function of the number of EU interventions performing one of five roles in the negotiating process and the total length of negotiations (Kissack Citation2008).
11. Germany (2002) C29 (forced labour); UK (2006) C100 (equal pay) and (2007) C87 (freedom of association); Czech Republic (2008 and 2010) C111 (discrimination). Non-core labour standards: Portugal (2003); the Netherlands, Poland and Slovenia (2005); Ireland (2006); Italy and Spain (2007); Sweden (2008); Italy (2009).
12. The ban was lifted at the request of African states (Kubosova Citation2007).
13. The ILO is committed to zero real growth in its regular budget, making 2011 figures broadly accurate indicators of contributions over the last five years (ILO Citation2008: §233).
14. Germany: $31.1m annual regular budget contribution (ARBC), $13m voluntary contribution (VC); UK: $25.7m ARBC, $48.8m VC; France $23.8m ARBC, $36m VC; Italy: $19.4m ARBC, $33m VC.