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Foreword by Saskia Bricmont 50 billion Euros. This is what I call the “European child labour footprint”. In 2019, we imported goods tainted with child labour to fulfil our needs as consumers for an amount representing close to 100 Euros per European. Yet, the 50 billion figure does not capture the full extent of the child labour phenomenon since most children (about 80%) work on familybased farms producing goods that do not enter global supply chains. When taking office, President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen made the strong pledge of “zero tolerance towards child labour”. Two years have passed, and to be honest, we have not witnessed any meaningful steps to make this commitment concrete. We are now in 2021, the UN Year for the Elimination of Child Labour, which unfortunately coincides with a reversal of the global downward trend in child labour. Years of progress will be wiped out by the pandemic that will increase millions of working children due to school closures, job losses and deepening poverty. This scourge is usually viewed through the lens of development and cooperation policy. Here, it is worth noting that the commitment taken by the EU and its Members States to devote 0.7% of their GNP in official development assistance has not been honoured: the EU27 collective effort peaked at 0.49% of EU Gross National Income (GNI) in 2016 before sliding to 0,41% in 2019. Only three Member States met their ODA commitments: Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark. In front of the Members of the European Parliament, Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, then candidate for the trade portfolio affirmed that “in today’s world, trade is about much more than just trade. European trade policy must do more to help us meet the great challenges of our time.” And as rightly stated by the European Commission, “the EU as a main global trade partner has a crucial role to play towards the elimination of child labour in global supply chains.” Taking these assertions at face value, I commissioned this study to follow up on President von der Leyen in view of coming forward with proposals putting the EU at the forefront when it comes to the achievement of SDG 8.7 on the eradication of child labour, forced labour and modern slavery by 2025 and in the context of this UN Year. It is worth noting that against the backdrop of the UN Year, the EU is about to strike deals with two countries flagged among the main countries featuring child labour: China (EUR 37 billion) and Brazil (EUR 908 million). It would be a missed opportunity and a moral failure not to tackle child labour in these contexts. This study demonstrates that a mere prohibition of the entry into the EU market of goods produced with child labour may lead to a counterintuitive outcome: an outright prohibition would push children further away in informal and dangerous activities in countries where enforcement activity is defaulting and where there are no worthy alternatives such as education and basic social protection.
