ILO to lift restrictions on Myanmar Myanmar received a significant economic boost on Wednesday when the International Labour Organisation voted at its annual conference to lift restrictions on the country, paving the way for its admission to membership and preferential treatment for its exports to EU markets. The decision, taken a day before Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi addresses the plenary session of the ILO conference in Geneva, removes a crucial impediment in Myanmar's trade and business ties with the EU. Despite its decision to suspend most economic sanctions on the country in late April, the EU has continued to exclude Myanmar from its generalised system of preferences (GSP), which gives developing countries preferential access to EU markets. The EU withdrew those trade privileges from Myanmar in the late 1990s, citing the widespread use of forced labour and the ban on trade unions. The suspension of sanctions did not affect the trade restrictions, which have severely disadvantaged Myanmar's products in EU markets - particularly of garments, one of its mainstay exports. The US also removed GSP on Myanmar's imports, although a separate act of Congress takes precedence over the GSP ban. Wednesday's decision ends 13 years of ILO restrictions on Myanmar and follows the government's agreement in March on an action plan to eliminate forced labour by 2015. In efforts to get the restrictions lifted, Myanmar passed legislation to prosecute those suspected of using forced labour. The reformist government of President Thein Sein also pushed legislation through parliament last year to legalise trade unions, and about 40 have been created since then, according to a spokesman for ILO director-general Juan Somavia. The EU's member countries had left it up to the ILO to determine when to lift the trade restrictions, which included a ban on both ILO membership and technical co-operation, except for the purpose of combating forced labour. Myanmar has not been invited to ILO meetings although it permitted an ILO office to open in Yangon some years ago. Lady Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, said in April that the bloc's foreign affairs council supported reinstating the GSP programme, which would reduce tariffs on Myanmar's exports to the EU, but could only do so after a favourable assessment by the ILO. At the same time, Karel de Gucht, the EU's trade commissioner, said: "If you want to support the . . . transition in Myanmar, it is very important that they can export, they can sell goods into the European market." Ms Suu Kyi is expected to urge countries to remain vigilant towards any abuse of labour in Myanmar when she embarks on her first visit to Europe - and only her second trip outside Myanmar - since 1988 with an address to the ILO's plenary session on Thursday. She made a historic visit to Thailand at the end of April, after spending much of the past two decades under house arrest.