There is something almost admirable about the European Union’s capacity to transform moral surrender into administrative procedure. While Pakistani security forces were allegedly shooting unarmed demonstrators in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, imposing communications blackouts, carrying out mass arrests and preventing journalists from entering the area, Brussels was congratulating itself on the renewal of a trade system supposedly founded on human rights, democratic governance and the rule of law.
The timing could hardly have been more grotesque.
At least 30 people were reportedly killed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in the final days of July, according to the Joint Awami Action Committee, after security forces opened fire on protesters demanding political rights and electoral reform. The exact toll remains difficult to verify because the authorities shut down internet and mobile communications, restricted media access and reportedly removed bodies from hospitals. Amnesty International called for an independent investigation. The United Nations had already demanded inquiries into earlier deaths during the unrest and expressed alarm at Pakistan’s decision to classify the protest movement as a terrorist organisation.
In Brussels, however, Pakistan remains a beneficiary of the European Union’s GSP+ scheme.
This is not an incidental trade concession. GSP+ is formally described by the European Commission as a “special incentive arrangement for sustainable development and good governance”. In return for zero tariffs on a wide range of exports to the European market, beneficiary countries are required to implement international conventions covering human rights, labour rights, environmental protection and good governance. The revised scheme, approved in 2026, is supposed to strengthen these conditions and increase monitoring. Supposed to. Pakistan’s continued access to GSP+ reveals the difference between what European policy instruments claim to be and what they actually are. On paper, the scheme is conditional. In practice, the conditions have become decorative. They are invoked in reports, parliamentary questions, diplomatic visits and carefully worded statements of “concern”. They are rarely enforced in any manner capable of inconveniencing the Pakistani state. Kashmir now makes that hypocrisy impossible to disguise.
For decades, Pakistan has marketed itself internationally as the defender of Kashmiri rights. It has built an entire strategic mythology around the suffering of Kashmiris under Indian rule. Kashmir has justified its military posture, its diplomatic campaigns, its support for armed proxies and, not least, the army’s permanent claim to political supremacy. Yet when Kashmiris under Pakistani administration demand representative government, economic rights or an end to electoral manipulation, Islamabad responds with the same machinery of repression it has long deployed elsewhere: anti-terrorism laws, arrests, information blackouts, accusations of foreign conspiracy and, ultimately, bullets. The latest protests emerged partly from opposition to legislative seats reserved for refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir living elsewhere in Pakistan. Local activists argue that the system allows Islamabad to shape elections and retain control over the territory. The demand was political and constitutional. The response was to outlaw the organisation leading it, label its members terrorists and militarise the electoral process. This is not merely another episode in Pakistan’s Kashmir problem. It is the reversal of Pakistan’s Kashmir narrative. The state that has spent decades demanding self-determination for Kashmiris is now accused of killing Kashmiris who demand a meaningful political voice. The state that condemns restrictions on media and communications across the Line of Control imposes its own blackout. The state that denounces anti-terrorism legislation as an instrument of political repression when used by India applies precisely the same logic to a civil protest movement in territory it calls “Azad”, or free.
For the European Union, the importance of this reversal should be obvious. It is not encountering an isolated violation or a temporary emergency. It is confronting a system.
The same structure is visible in Balochistan, where enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, secret proceedings and collective punishment have become features of governance rather than aberrations. The Human Rights Council of Balochistan documented 124 alleged enforced disappearances in April 2026, 95 in May and 63 in June, alongside dozens of killings. It has also reported secret or “faceless” proceedings against leaders of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee and the use of the criminal justice system to suppress peaceful political mobilisation. These figures come from a regional human rights organisation and cannot always be independently verified, precisely because access, transparency and accountability are systematically obstructed. But the pattern they describe is longstanding and has been repeatedly raised by activists, lawyers, journalists and international organisations. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, meanwhile, the language of counterterrorism has swallowed almost every other political category. Military operations, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, restrictions on protest and collective reprisals are justified through the endless war against the Pakistani Taliban. Civilians are squeezed between militant violence and a security establishment that treats entire districts as suspect populations. The formula remains constant. Political demands become security threats. Protesters become terrorists. Journalists become foreign agents. Missing persons become militants after their deaths. Elections remain legitimate until people vote or demonstrate in ways unacceptable to Rawalpindi. Europe sees all this. It cannot plausibly claim ignorance. The European Commission publishes monitoring reports. European parliamentary delegations visit Pakistan. Human rights organisations submit evidence. Baloch activists demonstrate outside European institutions. Pakistani journalists, opposition leaders and lawyers describe an increasingly authoritarian system in which the military controls political life, civilians are tried under security legislation and courts are used to regularise decisions taken elsewhere.
The problem is not lack of information. It is lack of intention. Pakistan is considered too useful, too fragile and too strategically positioned to be subjected to the standards Europe claims to uphold. It is useful in relation to Afghanistan. It is useful for migration management. It is useful as a security interlocutor, a large consumer market and a diplomatic bridge to parts of the Muslim world. Its economic instability is repeatedly presented as a reason not to withdraw trade privileges, because sanctions might hurt workers and destabilise the country. This argument might have some merit, but it also provides the Pakistani establishment with a perfect form of immunity. The worse the army manages the country, the more fragile Pakistan becomes. The more fragile it becomes, the more Europe fears applying pressure. Failure is therefore rewarded with indulgence. GSP+ was supposed to reverse this logic by making economic access conditional upon measurable progress. Instead, it has become a subsidy without enforceable conditions. European officials will argue that engagement is more effective than isolation, that withdrawing preferences would damage textile workers, and that dialogue has produced gradual improvements. Yet conditionality that is never applied is not engagement. It is permission. No one is suggesting that trade with Pakistan must cease or that ordinary workers should be punished for the conduct of generals and intelligence agencies. But between unconditional access and total economic rupture lies an entire range of measures that Brussels has consistently refused to use seriously: targeted suspension of preferences, measurable human rights benchmarks, deadlines, independent monitoring, transparent public reporting and specific consequences for non-compliance. The European Union could demand access for journalists and international observers in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. It could require credible investigations into the killings. It could link preferences to the release or fair trial of peaceful activists. It could insist on verifiable progress on enforced disappearances in Balochistan and accountability for collective punishment in KP. Instead, it produces language. “Concern.” “Dialogue.” “Continued monitoring.” “Constructive engagement.” These expressions have become the diplomatic vocabulary of complicity. The scandal of GSP+ is therefore larger than Pakistan. It concerns Europe’s own political credibility. The European Union presents itself as a normative power, a political community capable of using market access to promote international law and human dignity. It frequently invokes these principles against adversaries and strategically expendable states. But principles selectively applied are not principles. They are instruments.
If Pakistan can retain privileged access to the European market while protesters are shot in Kashmir, activists disappear in Balochistan and civilian populations in KP are governed through permanent emergency, then GSP+ no longer certifies compliance with human rights conventions. It certifies only that the beneficiary remains geopolitically useful enough for its violations to be absorbed. Pakistan understands this perfectly. Its rulers know that Europe will issue statements, request explanations and express alarm. They also know that the containers of textiles will continue to enter European ports under preferential tariffs. That is not conditionality. It is a discount on repression.
