Abstract

On 14 October 2015 the European Commission has presented the new trade and investment strategy "Trade for all: Towards a more responsible trade and investment policy". The strategy proposes a new approach to international trade and foreign investments, emphasizing that global value chains must be consistent with and promote human rights and environmental protection and contribute to sustainable development. This paper focuses on the on-going negotiations of regional trade and investment agreements (e.g. CETA, TTIP) and European economic partnership agreements, in order to assess whether they adequately protect human rights and how they could be more efficient in doing it. To this extent, it looks to the European strategy in the framework of the current debate between economic multilateralism and regionalism and examines the direction the European Union suggests to take.