ABSTRACT
Drawing on historical and current concepts, this chapter focuses on the interpretation of the WTO exceptions and considers the possibility of the authorisation of trade sanctions for reasons related to violations of workers’ rights. Furthermore, it introduces the most important historical views and details whether labour standards should be left to the ILO, encompassed by the WTO or both forces should be combined (the institutional approach), for example the Agency for Trade and Labour Standards ‘ATLAS’ jointly governed by the WTO and the ILO; joint ILO-GATT/WTO Enforcement Regime; the concept of a global labour and trade framework agreement ‘GLTFA’. The chapter also focuses on the integrated legislative approach which consists in the integration of core labour standards into the WTO through changes to law, for example the view according to which the WTO should build on Article XX(e) of GATT by adding a provision that allows countries to sanction the specific sector of a country that has violated core labour standards, if the ILO has determined that there is a violation.
