EU Report Raises Rights Concerns As Pakistan Reaps Billions In Trade Benefits

Pakistan pocketed roughly €732 million in EU tariff exemptions last year as the top beneficiary of Europe’s GSP+ trade scheme, but a new joint assessment from the European Commission and the EU’s foreign policy arm paints a troubling picture of the human rights record underpinning that privilege, one marked by rising enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and a deepening crackdown on dissent.

The Joint Staff Working Document, dated July 16 and covering the 2023-2025 monitoring period, credits Islamabad with scattered legislative progress, a new National Commission for Minorities, a narrower scope for the death penalty, and the country’s first-ever marital rape conviction. But the report’s overall verdict is stark: Pakistan has “regressed in a number of areas while positive change was limited,” with the deterioration concentrated in exactly the areas the EU considers non-negotiable for continued access to its market.

At the center of Brussels’ concerns is a surge in enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, particularly in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, occurring without any meaningful accountability. The report notes that Pakistan’s own Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances has closed more than 9,000 cases without ever finding evidence of state involvement and has not produced a single prosecution to date.

Families of the disappeared have received some compensation, the document says, but through no clear or consistent process. Pakistani authorities have told the EU they see no need for standalone legislation criminalising enforced disappearance, insisting existing laws already cover it, a position that runs contrary to repeated recommendations from UN treaty bodies.

Compounding the problem, the report says, are recent amendments to anti-terrorism laws in Balochistan and Punjab that appear to permit preventive detention without charge, trial, or meaningful judicial oversight. Combined with other security legislation, EU officials warn this blurs the line between ordinary law enforcement and enforced disappearance itself, with a heightened risk of the powers being turned against political dissidents, journalists, human rights defenders, students, and relatives of victims.

Freedom of expression fares little better in the assessment. Despite passage of a law meant to protect journalists, the report finds that Pakistan’s media environment has grown more hostile and dangerous, citing intimidation, harassment, and violence against reporters covering sensitive subjects, along with the use of strategic lawsuits to silence journalists and lawyers. Cybercrime, defamation, blasphemy, sedition, and counter-terrorism statutes are described as containing vague provisions that create a chilling effect and are disproportionately wielded against minorities and critics. Internet access was also repeatedly restricted around the 2024 elections, during protests, and in Balochistan, the document notes.

Blasphemy laws draw particular scrutiny. The report documents how a “blasphemy business group” ensnared more than 800 people, mostly young men, in online extortion scams during the monitoring period; even after the network was reportedly dismantled, more than 300 wrongly accused victims remained in jail as of this April. No one has ever been prosecuted in Pakistan for making a false blasphemy accusation, according to the assessment.

Religious minorities more broadly continue to face discrimination, mob violence, and attacks on their places of worship, with prosecutions for hate crimes rare enough to foster a sense of impunity, the report says. Ahmadi Muslims are singled out as facing especially severe treatment, including criminal charges tied to discriminatory laws, desecration of mosques and graves, sometimes with the alleged involvement or tolerance of local authorities and targeted killings.

The judiciary itself is flagged as a growing concern. Recent constitutional amendments have raised alarm within the EU over judicial independence, military accountability, and the broader rule of law, on top of long-standing problems like case backlogs and reports of intimidation against judges and prosecutors. Political rights have also suffered, the report says, pointing to the detention of opposition figures, including a former prime minister, under conditions raising fair-trial concerns, and to military trials that fall short of international fair-trial standards.

Space for civil society is shrinking too, according to the assessment, with new registration rules and restrictions on foreign funding making it harder for rights groups to operate, particularly in some provinces.

The findings carry real economic weight. Pakistan’s textile and clothing sector is heavily reliant on GSP+ preferences, with EU imports from the country running at roughly €8.3 billion in 2024 and a preference utilization rate above 95%. The scheme has already faced disruption, the Commission suspended GSP+ tariff benefits for Pakistani ethanol imports for two years starting in June 2025 over separate market concerns.

Looking ahead, EU officials say Islamabad must show real accountability for rights violations, rein in enforced disappearances, reform blasphemy and cybercrime laws, and protect minorities if it wants to keep its privileged trade status intact, especially with revised GSP rules due to take effect in 2027. Much of the progress cited in the report, the assessment cautions, remains legislative or administrative on paper, with little evidence yet that it has translated into change on the ground.