The international human rights system not only defines a shared framework of fundamental and essential social values but also serves as a point of reference for ethical codes, moral principles, and standards of conduct expected in various spheres of international trade and business. As one of the principal politico-economic actors in the capitalist system, the European Union’s approach to respecting human rights holds fundamental importance. The EU and its member states have a long-standing record of employing political, military, economic, and cultural instruments against other countries to persuade them to comply with human rights norms. The central concern of this study is to examine the transformation of the EU’s human rights pressure instruments and their reflection in the mechanisms of the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP). The main question is: what changes have occurred in the EU’s human rights pressure tools? The research hypothesis suggests that, in line with transformations in the global capitalist system, the EU’s human rights pressures have increasingly acquired a politico-economic character. Accordingly, the EU employs both coercion and consent as instruments to encourage states to comply with global human rights norms. In this context, the EU has used the GSP mechanism as a soft and sophisticated channel of consent to exert pressure on other countries to adopt the guidelines of the international human rights system.