The London School of Economics and Political Science’s draft human rights impact assessment on the EU-Mercosur trade agreement totally skips the rights to freedom of expression, privacy, and protection of personal data.
As “Comments are welcome!”, I provided feedback on the draft report.
EU Sustainability Impact Assessments include human rights impact assessments. However, the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Sustainability Impact Assessment in Support of the Association Agreement Negotiations between the European Union and Mercosur (Draft Interim Report) totally skips the rights to freedom of expression, privacy, and protection of personal data.
We find the justification for this at page 87:
“While it is important to recognise the significance of all human rights such as the right to freedom of expression, the right to freedom of religion or belief, or the right to privacy, it is likewise important to recognize that while a trade agreement may have the capacity to influence the achievement of some human rights, it is rather limited in its contribution to the achievement of others.”
This misses the point. A deep integration trade agreement may undermine fundamental rights. This would make the agreement incompatible with the EU Treaties and the Charter of fundamental rights of the EU. Clearly, an impact assessment has to seriously investigate possible conflicts.
Intellectual property rights and their enforcement may seriously threaten fundamental rights at various levels. Cross-border trade may undermine data-protection.
For a serious impact assessment regarding data protection, see, for example, K. Irion, S. Yakovleva and M. Bartl, “Trade and Privacy: Complicated Bedfellows? How to achieve data protection-proof free trade agreements”, independent study commissioned by BEUC et al., published 13 July 2016, Amsterdam, Institute for Information Law (IViR). https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/trade_and_privacy.pdf
LSE may not be able to carry out a serious assessment of the impact on the rights to freedom of expression, privacy, and protection of personal data. In that case, LSE should have found a partner for this.
It is furthermore impossible to carry out such an impact assessment as long as the text of the agreement is not available. LSE should have mentioned this.
Regarding fundamental rights, LSE’s draft report fails deeply.
