Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 14 December 2016 - Strasbourg

EC-Uzbekistan Partnership and Cooperation Agreement and bilateral trade in textiles (A8-0332/2016 - Maria Arena)

  Lynn Boylan and Liadh Ní Riada (GUE/NGL), in writing. – We voted against this report over concern about human rights. There is an existing EU-Uzbekistan Partnership and Cooperation Agreement in place since 1999, but it excludes the textile industry.

In 2011 the European Parliament refused to give consent to a Commission proposal to include the textile industry in the PCA due to evidence of the systematic use of child labour in cotton harvesting related to the textile industry. The Commission says this is no longer a problem but human rights NGOs believe it is still a problem.

We voted in favour of a request from the Greens to postpone the vote until after an ILO report next year, which should shed further clarity on the ongoing extent of child labour, but it was defeated.

Due to the allegations of ongoing child labour by credible human rights and labour rights NGOs, we are strongly opposed to this agreement.