The number of transnational company agreements being signed is in decline

After a strong period of robust growth in the 2000s, the number of transnational company agreements (TCAs) being signed began to slow from a peak reached in 2008. Since then, while the volume of international framework agreements (IFAs) has remained stable, the number of European framework agreements (EFAs) signed each year has fallen significantly. Udo Rehfeldt, political scientist and researcher at the IRES has authored this study and suggests several explanations for the decline. One such explanation is an underlying antipathy by multinational enterprise leaders towards TCAs and the difficulty in finding new players willing to sign them. The fact that the number of IFAs being signed is stable is largely due to the fact that global union federations (GUFs) are now more focused on the quality of these agreements rather than on the quantity.…