EU report raises rights concerns as Pak reaps billions in trade benefits

Muzaffarabad (TIP): Pakistan pocketed roughly Euro 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.