http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/sweden-to-support-sri-lanka-for-regaining-gsp/article8524214.ece
The assurance was given by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström during her meeting with Sri Lanka president Maithripala Sirisena on Monday.
Sweden has pledged its support to Sri Lanka to get back the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) plus, which provides concessional access to the European Union (EU).The assurance was given by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström during her meeting with Sri Lanka president Maithripala Sirisena on Monday.
In August 2010, the EU temporarily withdrew the facility of the GSP plus given to Sri Lanka after a year-long “exhaustive investigation” of the European Commission which ended in October 2009. “Significant shortcomings” in respect of Sri Lanka's implementation of three UN human rights conventions – International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture and the Convention on the Rights of the Child – were cited for the action. Since then, Sri Lanka continues to export to the EU under the standard GSP preferential treatment and the EU, in 2014, accounted for 31 per cent of the country’s total exports. However, it is not that the withdrawal has not affected the south Asian country. Though there were reports in October 2013 that the withdrawal let to closure of 25 apparel factories and loss of nearly 10,000 jobs, besides the country having lost LKR 782 million from apparel exports, the then Rajapaksa regime had maintained that there was no negative impact and the overall exports to the EU witnessed a rise, keeping 2010 as the base year. The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government, which assumed power in January 2015, has been publicly expressing its keenness to regain the facility at the earliest.
Meanwhile, in her talk on Monday, Ms. Wallström explained the rationale behind her country’s “feminist foreign policy.” Emphasising that the policy was more than a brand, she said it defined gender equality as a “peace and security” issue.