Headline : New Laws and Guidelines From E.U. and ILO Target Forced Labor With Eye on Xinjiang

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The European Parliament voted this week in favor of regulations to ban the sale, import, and export of goods made using forced labor. While the ban does not explicitly target any single country, it is widely seen as responding to numerous reports of forced labor in China, particularly in Xinjiang, where the U.N. has concluded that the Uyghur population may be subject to crimes against humanity and enslavement. The E.U.’s ban follows related measures by the International Labour Organization (ILO) to strengthen its protections against forced labor as a result of similar concerns about supply chains and labor conditions in China. Reuters summarized the European Parliament’s new regulations:

The regulations were a long time in the making. The European Commission released its official proposal back in September 2022. Since then, various reports have demonstrated that coercive labor transfers in Xinjiang have continued, and dozens of companies in the automobile and apparel industries have allowed goods made with forced labor to enter the EU market. AFP described how the legislation that was just passed would work to address some of these issues:

Critics pointed out that the E.U.’s regulations are not as strict as those passed in the U.S. by the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act, which went into effect in June 2022 and placed the burden of proof on companies to establish the absence of forced labor, not on regulators to show its absence. “We welcome this milestone but stress that all related guidance, guidelines and considerations of when to investigate cases be created in a way that ensures the regulation can effectively ban products made with state-imposed forced labor,” said Zumretay Arkin, director of global advocacy at World Uyghur Congress. She added that the E.U. “missed a crucial opportunity to agree on an instrument that could meaningfully address forced labor when the government is the perpetrator, like in the Uyghur region in China.” Mared Gwyn Jones & Paula Soler from Euronews highlighted other critiques about insufficient redress for victims of forced labor: 

Reactions in China were predictably negative. Global Times stated that the forced-labor ban “overshadows China[-E.U.] ties” and urged the E.U. to have the “strategic wisdom not to mix political and economic issues.” In addition to this ban, E.U.-China relations have been deteriorating recently due to rising pressure within Europe to push back against Chinese exports of overcapacity and to impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports. Other contributing factors include growing dissatisfaction about Chinese support for Russia’s war against Ukraine, European raids on Chinese company Nuctech, and German arrests of suspected Chinese spies.

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