Islamabad, July 29 (IANS) The Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus, commonly known as GSP+, is a special trade arrangement offered by the European Union that grants full duty-free access to its 27-member single market for select developing economies, contingent on their ratification and effective implementation of 27 international conventions covering human rights, labour rights, environmental protection, climate action and good governance.
Pakistan has been the largest beneficiary of this scheme since 2014, and the arrangement has become structurally embedded in its export economy, particularly in textiles and clothing.
On July 16, the European Commission and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy jointly published the Joint Staff Working Document assessing Pakistan’s compliance with GSP+ obligations for the 2023-2025 monitoring period. The report carries considerable weight because it is the final monitoring assessment under the existing GSP regulation before a revised, more stringent framework takes effect on January 1 in 2027 under which all beneficiaries, including Pakistan, must re-apply under tighter sustainability and governance criteria. Its significance lies not merely in trade arithmetic but in the fact that continued market access, worth billions of euros annually, is now explicitly conditioned on measurable improvements in human rights, rule of law and labour practices, rather than legislative promises alone.
The scale of what is at stake underscores the report’s importance. Pakistan’s GSP+-eligible exports to the EU stood at EUR 7.5 billion in 2024, and the country saved an estimated EUR 732 million in tariff exemptions that year alone, equivalent to roughly nine per cent of its total export value to the bloc. The EU remains Pakistan’s single largest export market, absorbing 28 per cent of its total exports, with textiles and clothing constituting between 70 and 76 per cent of that trade.
The document’s tone is calibrated but unmistakably concerned, first acknowledging genuine legislative progress before turning to a longer list of unresolved and, in several areas, worsening problems.
The Commission acknowledged several important reforms by Pakistan during the reporting period. It noted legislation to establish a National Commission for Minorities, a further narrowing of capital punishment by removing four offences from the death penalty, and the continuation of a de facto moratorium on executions since December 2019. Pakistan adopted implementing rules under the Anti-Torture Act, passed a Domestic Violence Bill for Islamabad Capital Territory, and secured the country’s first conviction for marital rape in Sindh in February 2024, regarded as a symbolic milestone under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The National Commission for Human Rights obtained “A status” accreditation from the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions in 2024, while labour rights advanced through ratification of the ILO’s 2014 Forced Labour Protocol and enhanced monitoring. In the environmental sphere, Pakistan maintained regular reporting, ratified the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol.
Yet the report is explicit that “most progress is of legislative and administrative nature and needs to be translated into real improvements on the ground” – a formulation that, in diplomatic language, signals skepticism about implementation. Beneath the acknowledged reforms lies a considerably longer catalogue of regression. Enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings “increased, without accountability for perpetrators,” particularly in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Freedom of expression “deteriorated” as amendments to cybercrime, anti-terrorism and blasphemy legislation introduced vague provisions capable of being deployed against journalists, human rights defenders, minorities and ordinary citizens, exposing them to imprisonment, asset confiscation or travel bans. Recent constitutional amendments were criticised for “further undermining judicial independence,” compounding pre-existing obstacles to fair trial and access to justice. The report also notes, with careful restraint, that forced labour “continued to affect too many” and that child labour rates are “only slowly decreasing” despite new provincial action plans.
The report’s release triggered swift domestic reaction. Senior Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir publicly questioned the state of governance in the country, citing the EU Commission’s finding that enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings had increased without accountability for perpetrators. His remarks reflect a broader unease among Pakistani civil society and independent media that the report’s findings validate long-standing domestic criticism that the international community had, until now, largely overlooked.
Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English-language daily, characterized the report as one in which the EU had “noted issues” in Pakistan’s GSP+ compliance and had explicitly urged Islamabad to address these “shortcomings” before the 2027 reapplication deadline, while carefully noting that the Commission’s assessment was “dominated by concerns over the country’s human rights record” even as it recognised legislative measures. The convergence of a respected journalist’s criticism and mainstream domestic media coverage signals that the report has moved beyond a bureaucratic EU exercise into an active point of domestic political and reputational pressure on Islamabad, ahead of the more demanding 2027 GSP framework.
The report’s concerns are not abstract; recent events on the ground substantiate them. Independent monitoring groups recorded 1,455 documented cases of enforced disappearance in Balochistan in 2025 alone, a 75 per cent increase over 2024, with the Frontier Corps named in 889 cases and intelligence agencies in 288. Of these, more than 1,052 individuals remain missing and 83 were reportedly killed in custody, with students forming the largest single group of victims at 295 cases, indicating that the practice increasingly touches ordinary civilians rather than solely militant suspects. Fresh allegations continued into mid-2026, with three men from Mastung and Panjgur districts reportedly detained in unexplained circumstances as recently as June 2026, underscoring that the phenomenon documented by the EU report remains active rather than historical.
On blasphemy legislation, Pakistan recorded 344 blasphemy cases in a single recent year, the highest on record, with a Punjab district court sentencing individuals to death for online blasphemy content as recently as December 2025. While reports indicate that Pakistan’s law and interior ministries have deliberated removing the death penalty for blasphemy, following the precedent of the Criminal Laws Amendment Bill that removed several crimes from capital punishment eligibility in line with GSP+ requirements, officials have acknowledged that “the timing wasn’t right” for such reform.
The EU’s own findings corroborate this caution, noting that a “blasphemy business group” entrapped over 800 people through online scams during the reporting period, with more than 300 falsely accused individuals still imprisoned as of April 2026 despite the network’s apparent dismantling. Ahmadi Muslims continued to face targeted discrimination, including desecration of graves and mosques, in some instances with the alleged acquiescence of local authorities.
The economic exposure Pakistan faces should GSP+ preferences be withdrawn or curtailed is substantial and concentrated. Textiles and clothing account for over 75 per cent of Pakistan’s EU-bound exports, and the sector alone contributes approximately 8.5 per cent of national GDP while employing nearly 40 per cent of the industrial labour force. In 2024, Pakistan’s GSP+-eligible exports to the EU reached EUR 7,482 million, of which EUR 7,115 million were actually preferences-utilised, yielding tariff savings of EUR 732 million.
Should Pakistan lose GSP+ status and revert to Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) tariff rates, typically ranging between 6 and 12 per cent on textile and apparel products entering the EU – the additional annual tariff burden on Pakistani exporters would range approximately between EUR 427 million and EUR 854 million, based on 2024 trade volumes. This is a direct cost that would either be absorbed by already thin-margin exporters or passed on to buyers, risking a loss of price competitiveness against GSP+-retaining rivals such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, both of whom compete directly with Pakistan in EU apparel markets.
Given that the EU absorbs 28 per cent of Pakistan’s total exports, any material erosion of this preferential access would compound pressure on an economy that, per World Bank estimates, already had 47.2 per cent of its population living in poverty in 2025 and negligible growth following its narrow escape from sovereign debt default in July 2023. Export growth to the EU has already shown signs of fragility — nine-month export growth to major European markets slowed to under one per cent in the current fiscal year despite retained GSP+ status, reflecting how sensitive the sector already is to demand and compliance-cost pressures even before any formal preference withdrawal.
Taken as a whole, the EU’s assessment paints a portrait of a state that has learned to speak the language of reform – drafting commissions, passing bills, ratifying conventions, while struggling to translate these instruments into a lived reality for its citizens, particularly the most vulnerable among them: religious minorities, women, children, journalists and residents of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The tariff exemptions and preferential access Pakistan has enjoyed under GSP+ for over a decade were designed as an incentive structure, not an unconditional subsidy; the underlying premise was that market access would be reciprocated by governance improvements benefiting ordinary Pakistanis.
The persistence of enforced disappearances, the sluggish decline in child labour, the entrenched misuse of blasphemy statutes and the continuing weakness of anti-corruption enforcement suggest that a meaningful share of this privileged access has not yet been converted into welfare gains commensurate with its scale. Whether Pakistan can close this gap before the more demanding 2027 GSP framework takes effect will determine not only its continued trading privileges with Europe, but also whether the underlying promise of the arrangement – development anchored in good governance, is finally realised for its people.
–IANS
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