REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BRUSSELS - The European Union is considering trade action against Bangladesh, which has preferential access to EU markets for its garments, in order to pressure Dhaka to improve safety standards after a building collapse killed 411 of factory workers last week.
Late on Tuesday, the EU said it would look at Bangladesh's preferential trade access to the EU market in order to encourage better safety standards and labour conditions. A possible first step would be an investigation, which could at least a year.
"This is about firing a shot across the bows of Bangladesh to get them to engage on the issue," an EU official, who declined to be named, told Reuters in Brussels on Wednesday.
Duty-free access offered by Western countries and low wages have helped turn Bangladesh's garment exports into a 19 billion USD a year industry, with 60 percent of clothes going to Europe. Any action by the EU on Bangladesh's duty-free and quota-free access would require the agreement of all member states and could take more than a year to implement.
"The European Union calls upon the Bangladeshi authorities to act immediately to ensure that factories across the country comply with international labor standards...," the 27-nation bloc said in a statement issued by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht.
The Swiss-based IndustriAll Global Union, which represents 50 million workers worldwide, on Tuesday set a May 15 deadline to finalize with Western retailers a commitment to a fire and building safety plan for Bangladesh.
"Funds will be made available for inspections, training and upgrades of dangerous facilities," it said in a statement and called on retailers to renegotiate contracts to pay suppliers more in order to guarantee living wages for workers and to enable technical upgrades to factories.
About 3.6 million people work in Bangladesh's garment industry, making it the world's second-largest apparel exporter, behind China. The industry employs mostly women, some of whom earn as little as 38 USD a month. In 2012 to June 2012, Bangladesh's garment exports to the EU rose to 11.37 billion USD from 10.52 billion USD a year earlier, according to Bangladesh's commerce ministry.
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