In April 2026, the European Union’s ambassador to Pakistan stated that the country’s access to GSP+ is “neither guaranteed nor automatic”, pointing to concerns over blasphemy laws, enforced disappearances, and minority rights. This was not an isolated remark, but part of a broader shift in Brussels: the question is no longer whether Pakistan has ratified international conventions, but whether it is implementing them in practice, writes Dimitra Staikou.
The agreement reached in December 2025 between the European Commission, the European Council, and the European Parliament on the revision of the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) reaffirmed its role as a central instrument of the European Union’s effort to link trade with sustainable development. The updated framework, covering 65 developing countries, aims to strengthen the social, labour, environmental, and climate dimensions of EU trade policy, introducing stricter monitoring mechanisms, greater transparency, and the possibility of withdrawing trade preferences in cases of serious violations.
Yet the practical application of these ambitions remains under scrutiny. The visit of a European Parliament delegation to Islamabad in April 2026 further highlighted the gap between institutional design and political reality. While Pakistan continues to present itself as committed to reform and compliance with the GSP+ framework, discussions in Brussels increasingly reflect a more critical perspective. Reports from 2025 and 2026 point to recurring challenges in areas such as press freedom, rule of law, and the protection of minorities—underscoring the persistent gap between formal commitments and real-world outcomes.
This shift—from formal compliance to actual implementation—reveals a more complex structural issue. Pakistan continues to benefit from the trade advantages of the GSP+ system in a context where the full implementation of its commitments remains uneven. The core debate surrounding its participation is no longer technical, but political: whether preferential access to the EU market is matched by meaningful progress in fulfilling its obligations. GSP+ provides countries like Pakistan with duty-free or reduced-tariff access to the European Union market in exchange for implementing 27 international conventions covering human rights, labour standards, environmental protection, and governance. However, Members of the European Parliament and civil society organisations continue to point to areas requiring further progress, including the use of blasphemy laws, the protection of religious minorities, freedom of expression and media, and the enforcement of labour and human rights protections.
The European Union has sought to address these concerns through a comprehensive reform of the GSP framework. Initiated in 2021 and concluded in 2025, the revised system preserves its core structure—divided into Everything But Arms, Standard GSP, and GSP+—while introducing significant changes aimed at reinforcing conditionality and enforcement. These include an expanded list of international conventions, the requirement for detailed implementation plans, enhanced transparency, greater involvement of civil society, and faster procedures for the withdrawal of trade preferences in cases of violations.
In practice, the GSP remains a cornerstone of the European Union’s strategy to connect trade policy with sustainable development and institutional convergence. As a unilateral instrument, it grants preferential access to the EU market to 65 developing countries, covering two-thirds of their exports. Its three-tier structure provides increasing levels of benefits, with GSP+ offering the most extensive access conditional on compliance with international standards.
The new framework, set to enter into force in 2027, further strengthens this approach by expanding obligations and enforcement tools. It introduces additional international conventions, stricter monitoring, enhanced transparency mechanisms, and the possibility of rapid withdrawal of preferences in cases of serious violations. It also introduces new elements linking trade preferences to cooperation on migration-related issues, such as the readmission of irregular migrants.
The case of Pakistan illustrates the challenges inherent in this model. Since joining GSP+ in 2014, Pakistan has become one of its largest beneficiaries, with a significant share of its exports entering the EU duty-free—particularly in the textile sector. The economic importance of the scheme for Pakistan is considerable, creating a relationship of mutual dependence between the two sides.
At the same time, monitoring reports from 2025–2026 indicate that progress in implementing commitments remains uneven. This raises broader questions about the effectiveness of conditionality and the credibility of enforcement mechanisms within the GSP+ framework.
The implications extend beyond the bilateral relationship. For European industries, concerns arise regarding fair competition, while for the European Union, the issue is one of credibility as a normative power. In an increasingly competitive geopolitical environment, consistency between declared values and actual policy implementation becomes strategically significant.
In this context, some critics extend their analysis beyond Pakistan and turn to the European Union itself. They argue that the continuation of GSP+ may be shaped not only by compliance assessments but also by broader geopolitical and economic considerations. Pakistan remains a key partner in a sensitive region, while European industries—particularly textiles—benefit from access to competitively priced imports. Within this framework, it is often suggested that enforcement mechanisms may be applied cautiously, in order to balance normative commitments with strategic and economic interests.
As a result, the notion of “misuse” becomes more nuanced. When a country continues to benefit from substantial trade advantages without commensurate progress in implementing commitments related to human rights, religious freedom, and the rule of law, the issue extends beyond the beneficiary to the functioning of the system itself.
GSP+ is not a failed instrument—but it is one being tested in practice. The challenge for the European Union is not only to maintain its economic effectiveness, but to ensure that it remains aligned with the principles on which it is built. Ultimately, its credibility will depend not on its design, but on its implementation—and on whether the EU is willing to confront the tension between values and interests.
