Second EU-US Ministerial Trade and Labour Dialogue meeting discusses forced labour and the green transition

The discussion focused on how to eradicate forced labour from EU and US supply chains and how to make the green transition a success for workers and businesses.

Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis and US Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai met the TALD’s social partners in Luleå in Sweden as part of the Trade and Technology Council (TTC). They took forward discussions on eradicating forced labour from EU and US supply chains that they started at the last TTC in December.

This is the first time that EU and US business and labour organisations have presented joint policy recommendations – based on input from the TALD’s stakeholders – showing the value of the TALD process. The EU and US will now further discuss how these recommendations can best be taken into account and how to ensure follow-up.

TALD participants also began a discussion on how to make the green transition a success for workers and businesses. As the EU and US launch their work programme on the Transatlantic Initiative on Sustainable Trade (TIST) to address global environmental and climate challenges, the focus of the TALD on this is timely. Social partner stakeholders were invited to deepen their exchanges on this topic in the run-up to the next Ministerial TALD meeting.

The EU and US established the TALD at their second TTC meeting on 16 May 2022 in order to consult their respective social partner stakeholders (on the EU side also referred to as 'social partners') on transatlantic trade and labour issues. They held their inaugural technical meeting in September 2022 and the first meeting at Ministerial level took place in December 2022.

For more information

EU-US Joint Statement of the Trade and Technology Council (May 2023)

Joint recommendations by transatlantic labour and business stakeholders (June 2023)

Inaugural technical TALD meeting

First Ministerial TALD meeting