Since the EU–Korea trade agreement in 2011, all chapters on trade and sustainable development (TSD) establish civil society mechanisms to monitor the commitments made in this chapter: a domestic advisory group (DAG) for each party and an annual transnational civil society meeting. The former is a membership-based closed mechanism, while the latter is not member-based and therefore more open and less structured than the DAGs.
In this report, we focus on DAGs, the most institutionalised and permanent civil society bodies under the TSD chapters. The objective of this study is to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of DAGs, identify their main challenges, distinguish teething problems from structural issues and put forward solutions to address them. Original data collection was carried out through a survey, to which 50 EU and 74 Non-EU DAG members responded, and 18 interviews with EU and Non-EU DAG members.
