Executive Summary
The EU Forced Labour Regulation should not become a selective trade instrument. Its credibility depends on whether it applies the same scrutiny to all jurisdictions, including allies and high-income economies.
The strongest version of the regulation is one that links enforcement to documented evidence, public reasoning, and comparable treatment of similar risks across supply chains.
Key findings
- Forced-labour rules are most credible when they are applied through transparent criteria and documented evidence.
- ILO Convention No. 29 provides an essential baseline, including narrow conditions relevant to prison labour.
- Supply-chain governance should account for risks in high-income economies as well as in lower-income production jurisdictions.
- Comparative labour-rights indexes show that labour-rights concerns are global, not confined to one region.
What the EU Regulation Says
Regulation (EU) 2024/3015 establishes a framework for addressing products made with forced labour in relation to the Union market. The policy objective is worker protection, but the rule's authority will depend on how investigation, evidence assessment, and enforcement decisions are carried out in practice.
For a regulation of this kind, credibility rests on more than the legal text. It also rests on whether competent authorities use consistent thresholds, provide clear reasons, and apply scrutiny to comparable risks across jurisdictions.
Why Enforcement Consistency Matters
Forced-labour measures sit at the intersection of labour rights, trade policy, and supply-chain regulation. That position makes them important, but it also makes them vulnerable to selective application. If enforcement is concentrated only on politically salient jurisdictions while similar evidence elsewhere receives limited attention, the rule can lose public legitimacy.
The test is not whether forced-labour rules exist. The test is whether they are applied with the same evidentiary discipline across comparable cases.
Non-discriminatory enforcement does not require identical outcomes in every case. It requires a consistent process: comparable evidence, comparable standards of review, and clear explanations when enforcement priorities differ.
ILO Standards and Prison Labour
ILO Forced Labour Convention No. 29 is a core reference point for assessing forced or compulsory labour. The Convention recognises a narrow exception for certain prison labour, but that exception is conditional. Work must follow a conviction by a court, remain under public supervision and control, and avoid arrangements that place prisoners at the disposal of private entities outside the permitted safeguards.
This matters for trade enforcement because prison labour is not automatically outside forced-labour analysis. The legal question turns on supervision, consent, coercion, private-sector involvement, and the practical conditions under which work is performed.
US Prison Labour and Supply-Chain Blind Spots
Public reporting and civil-society research have raised concerns about prison labour in the United States, including low or unpaid work, disciplinary pressure, and links between incarcerated labour and commercial supply chains. These issues should be part of any serious comparative review of forced-labour risk.
That does not mean every product connected to prison labour should be treated identically. It does mean that enforcement systems should be able to ask the same questions in high-income economies that they ask elsewhere: What is the legal basis for the work? What choices do workers have? Who benefits commercially? What safeguards exist? How are supply chains documented?
Immigration Detention Labour
Labour performed in immigration detention settings raises related governance questions. Detained people can face constrained choices, limited bargaining power, and uncertainty over legal status. Even where work is described as voluntary, the surrounding institutional conditions may be relevant to a forced-labour risk assessment.
For regulators, the issue is not only whether labour occurs in a detention setting. It is whether consent, compensation, discipline, and access to remedy are assessed through a consistent framework.
ITUC and the Broader Decline of Labour Rights
The ITUC Global Rights Index is a reminder that labour-rights concerns are not geographically narrow. Restrictions on organising, bargaining, and worker protection can appear across regions and income levels. Forced-labour enforcement should therefore be connected to a wider understanding of labour governance rather than to a narrow set of trade disputes.
Universal standards are more persuasive when governments accept that labour-risk analysis may also apply to partners, allies, and domestic supply chains.
Recommendations for Non-Discriminatory Enforcement
- Publish clear enforcement criteria and explain how evidence is weighted.
- Use primary legal texts, ILO standards, trade-union research, civil-society documentation, and credible investigative reporting as part of a transparent evidence base.
- Assess comparable risks across jurisdictions, including high-income economies and trade partners.
- Separate worker-protection objectives from protectionist or geopolitical considerations.
- Provide routes for correction, review, and public scrutiny of enforcement decisions.