COLOMBO — The European Union has set out the legal and human rights reforms it expects Sri Lanka to carry out to keep preferential access to the European market, weeks before new rules require Colombo to apply again for the concessions.
The reforms are set out in an assessment by the European Commission and the European External Action Service of Sri Lanka's performance under the Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus, or GSP+, covering 2023 to 2025. The document, SWD(2026) 192 final, was submitted to the Council of the European Union on 16 July.
Brussels is pressing Sri Lanka to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act and replace it with legislation meeting international standards, to change or repeal the Online Safety Act to protect freedom of expression, to strengthen domestic accountability mechanisms and independent prosecutions, to pursue a victim-centred reconciliation process, and to formally suspend the use of the death penalty as a step towards abolition.
The Commission calls these its main priorities for future engagement and links them to Sri Lanka's continued eligibility, particularly under the revised rules taking effect in 2027. The language stops short of an ultimatum, but GSP+ is a conditional arrangement under which countries receive tariff concessions in return for implementing international conventions on human rights, labour rights, environmental protection and good governance. The Commission estimates the scheme saved Sri Lankan exporters €139 million in duties in 2024.
Sri Lanka must apply again
The European Parliament approved a revised GSP regulation on 28 April and the Council adopted it in May. The new system takes effect on 1 January 2027 and runs for ten years.
It expands the number of international conventions GSP+ beneficiaries must ratify and effectively implement from 27 to 32. The additional agreements include the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Paris Agreement on climate change and the International Labour Organisation's Labour Inspection Convention. The rules also broaden the grounds on which preferences can be withdrawn to cover violations of environmental, climate and good governance commitments, and introduce an accelerated procedure for exceptionally grave violations.
Current beneficiaries will not be carried over into the new system. Sri Lanka, along with Bolivia, Cape Verde, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Uzbekistan, must submit a new GSP+ application during a transition period ending 31 December 2028. Applicants have to demonstrate compliance with the expanded set of conventions and submit an action plan explaining how they intend to implement them. Countries that do not apply, or that fail to qualify, would lose the preferences.
The prospect of a new application appears in the Commission's discussion of child labour, where it notes shortcomings in Sri Lanka's data and encourages the government to conduct another survey and publish the results in time for what it describes as a possible GSP+ reapplication.
The assessment says Sri Lanka demonstrated an increasing level of compliance with its obligations during the monitoring period, which included an EU mission in April and May last year. It credits the government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake with pursuing an anti-corruption agenda and promising action on longstanding human rights concerns, but says translating those commitments into practice has been slow and uneven.
The terrorism law
Repealing the Prevention of Terrorism Act has been a central issue in Sri Lanka's relationship with the European Union since GSP+ was restored in 2017. Successive governments have promised to replace the law, known as the PTA, which gives the authorities broad powers of arrest and detention and has long been criticised by human rights groups and United Nations experts.
The government published a proposed replacement, the Protection of the State from Terrorism Act, for public consultation in December 2025. The Commission acknowledges changes in the draft, including the removal of provisions allowing confessions made to police officers to be admitted as evidence and a greater role for magistrates, but notes that the United Nations has found parts of the proposed law still incompatible with international human rights standards. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published its comments in February. The government's review of the draft had not been completed when the European assessment was prepared.
The Commission says the PTA continued to be used during the reporting period, including in 2025 in cases involving expressions of opinion about conflicts abroad. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Act of 2007, whose Section 3 has been used in speech cases and criticised over its application against members of minority communities, has not been amended.
The Online Safety Act, passed in 2024, gives the authorities broad powers over online content. The government appointed a committee in February last year to recommend amendments and opened a public consultation that August, but the changes had not been completed when the assessment was drafted. The Commission's language differs between sections of its report. The executive summary calls for the law to be amended to protect freedom of expression, while the detailed human rights recommendations call for its repeal.
The death penalty
The European Union is asking Sri Lanka to turn its decades-long practice of not carrying out executions into a formal moratorium, with abolition as the eventual goal. Sri Lanka has not executed a prisoner since June 1976, though judges continue to hand down death sentences. Citing the Ministry of Justice's 2025 progress report, the assessment says 817 people were on death row in September 2025. Prison authorities put the figure at 806 this month.
On 10 August the Ratama Ekata National Operations Council, chaired by Dissanayake, discussed the use of capital punishment for drug offences, concluding that narcotics trafficking threatened the economy, the tourism industry and the country's social values.
Sri Lankan law already provides for the death penalty in certain drug cases. A 1984 amendment to the Poisons, Opium and Dangerous Drugs Ordinance introduced capital punishment for specified offences, and Act No. 7 of 2026 extended its application to manufacturing narcotics on the high seas. In 2019, when President Maithripala Sirisena sought to resume executions after more than four decades, the European Union warned that carrying out death sentences could have consequences for Sri Lanka's GSP+ status.
The latest assessment also raises concerns about compulsory drug rehabilitation and conditions in rehabilitation centres, saying they create risks of ill-treatment and possible violations of the Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Reconciliation in the North and East
The Commission notes that Dissanayake's government won significant support in Tamil areas in the 2024 elections after campaigning on a promise to unite the country, and that it subsequently announced several reconciliation initiatives. Progress, the assessment says, remains very slow.
Sri Lanka has continued to oppose the external investigative mechanism established under the 2025 United Nations Human Rights Council resolution. A National Roadmap for Reconciliation and Coexistence covering 2025 to 2029 was still being developed when the assessment was prepared. The Office on Missing Persons has been given resources to resolve more than 16,000 pending cases by the end of 2027.
Communities in the North and East have regained access to some land and partial access to roads previously controlled by the military, and have been allowed greater space to hold memorial events. Disputes over land, including land occupied or claimed by the military, remain a major obstacle to reconciliation.
The assessment records continuing reports of surveillance, intimidation and harassment of civil society activists and community leaders, particularly in Tamil-majority areas and among people working on enforced disappearances. Since December 2024, non-governmental organisations have been required to obtain clearance from the Ministry of Defence in addition to registering with the National Secretariat for Non-Governmental Organizations. The Commission calls for an end to such pressure and for stronger accountability for abuses by state authorities.
It reports continuing allegations of torture and other ill-treatment in detention, as well as deaths in custody, and points to guidelines issued to the police by the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka in May 2025 intended to prevent custodial and encounter deaths.
The European Union is also pressing Sri Lanka to enact comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation protecting ethnic and religious minorities and LGBTIQ+ people, to decriminalise consensual same-sex relations, to strengthen protections against sexual and gender-based violence, and to establish a minimum age of marriage under the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act.
The trade relationship
Sri Lanka lost GSP+ in 2010 amid European concerns over human rights compliance and regained the concessions in 2017. It is now the third-largest beneficiary of the scheme.
European Union imports from Sri Lanka declined from €3.2 billion in 2022 to €2.64 billion in 2024, an average annual fall of 8.4 per cent. Of the goods imported in 2024, €2.21 billion qualified for GSP+ preferences and €1.52 billion entered the European market using them.
Sri Lanka's utilisation rate, the share of eligible exports that made use of the tariff preferences, fell from 67.9 per cent in 2022 to 58.9 per cent in 2023 before rising to 68.9 per cent in 2024, its highest level to date. Clothing, the largest export sector, used the preferences for 57.3 per cent of eligible exports, while fish, crustaceans and molluscs recorded a rate of 99.8 per cent. The Commission calculates that the duty savings in 2024 were equivalent to about 5 per cent of Sri Lanka's total export value to the bloc.
The assessment does not threaten to withdraw Sri Lanka's existing preferences, nor does it say the country has failed to qualify under the new system. The European Union monitors compliance through visits, formal dialogue with governments and findings from United Nations and ILO bodies, and its rules allow preferences to be withdrawn for serious and systematic failures to meet the obligations underpinning the scheme.
