ABSTRACT
European Union (EU) citizens are increasingly confronted by the global context in which their choices, and those of their governments, are made. The use of child labour in the production of carpets and footballs is a good example. The existence of countries in which child labour was acceptable and where families had few alternatives, combined with manufacturers’ desire to keep wages low, has created an undesirable situation of child workers that trade policy alone has been unable to confront and correct. As a result, national, regional and global development policies have also been directed towards examining the reasons why child labour exists and persists, and proposing alternatives. Alongside aid, education and economic development policies, which are critical to the multidimensional solutions that are necessary to end child labour, the normative and legal justifi cation for the condemnation of child labour has come largely from the core labour standards (CLS) of the International Labour Organization (ILO). In order to emphasize the importance of the ILO CLS and provide more weight to its own support for fundamental worker rights, the EU has integrated the ILO core standards into some of its key bilateral agreements (see also Chapter 9 on trade relations).
