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The EU’s Human Rights Promotion in China and Myanmar: Trading Rights for Might? EU Diplomacy Paper No. 5, October 2014

Borreschmidt, Nikolaj (2014) The EU’s Human Rights Promotion in China and Myanmar: Trading Rights for Might? EU Diplomacy Paper No. 5, October 2014. [Working Paper]

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    Abstract

    This paper aims to answer two questions: generally, to what extent the human rights promotion of the European Union (EU) in third countries is consistent, and more specifically, why the EU’s approach towards human rights promotion in China and Myanmar differs despite similar breaches of human rights. It compares the EU’s approach to the two countries over two time periods in the late 1980s and 1990s in the context of the EU’s evolving human rights promotion. Based on the two case studies, this paper finds that the EU’s human rights promotion in third countries varies significantly. Whereas one would expect the EU’s approach to become increasingly assertive throughout the 1990s, this has only been the case with Myanmar. China’s economic and political importance to the EU appears to have counterweighed the general rise in European attention to third countries’ human rights records. In other words, this paper finds that commercial interests take precedence over human rights concerns in case of important trading partners.

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    Item Type: Working Paper
    Subjects for non-EU documents: EU policies and themes > External relations > EU-Asia-general > East and Southeast Asia
    EU policies and themes > External relations > human rights & democracy initiatives
    Countries > China
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Series: Series > College of Europe (Brugge) > EU Diplomacy Paper
    Depositing User: Professor Sieglinde Gstoehl
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 20 Dec 2014 22:06
    Number of Pages: 34
    Last Modified: 20 Dec 2014 22:06
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/58680

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