An assumption in the EU trade policy debate is that European business makes an essential contribution to the evolution and content of EU trade policy. The article contributes to this discussion in analysing the ways in which trade policy lobbying positions are developed within industry associations at the EU level. It identifies a potential lack of input and interest of European business in current trade policy issues, which raises a set of challenges for further research on business involvement in EU trade policy.
There has been increased interest in trade policy following the UK's EU membership referendum. However, relatively little scholarly analysis has been produced on how Brexit will affect EU trade policy. Instead, the received wisdom has been that Brexit will shift the EU's trade policy position in a less liberal direction. This is based on a 'static' analysis where the UK variable is simply removed from the figurative 'function' determining EU trade policy. We argue that this neglects the potential role of more 'dynamic' effects. First, the negotiations to determine the nature of the EU–UK future economic partnership are likely to involve a lengthy process with a still uncertain, and possibly evolving, destination. The outcome and process of arriving there will influence how economic operators and policymakers adapt their preferences and behaviour, including through possible relocation and the formation of new alliances. This will shape EU trade policy in potentially counterintuitive ways. Second, the absence of clear material structures from which actors can 'read' their interests highlights the importance of considering the role of ideas and political framing. How the vote for and consequences of Brexit are interpreted will likely shape what is considered an appropriate policy response. Examining EU trade policy since the Brexit vote, the article finds that rather than push the EU in a more illiberal direction, the referendum result has been used to reinforce the European Commission's external liberalisation agenda. The Commission's discursive response to Brexit and Donald Trump has been to portray the EU as a champion of free trade in an era of global populism.
Abstract The EU is the world's largest trade group, occupying an important position in the world trade in goods and services, especially in the field of service trade. The EU trade in services exports and imports are higher than the United States and Japan, and the EU is the world's largest capital output and input group, and the world's largest foreign aid providers. With the deepening of the European integration process, Europe's position in the world economy and trade is on the rise. Therefore, the EU's trade policy has increasingly become the focus of attention. From the vertical point of view, research directions can be divided into trade in goods policy, trade in services policy, international direct investment policy, trade-related intellectual property policy four field. In this paper, the four vertical areas are illustrated as the focus of the study.
Designing its trade policy towards China, Europe should exert extreme foresightedness. Rather than to be trapped in bilateral trade balance conflicts (economically meaningless and politically hopeless), the EU should push for objectives that are attractive to its own interests, and to Chinese interests - China's economy is already too large to be influenced exclusively from outside. In this perspective, the paper offers five main proposals. * Concerning trade in goods, the EU should aim at a 'joint better enforcement' of China's WTO Accession Protocol - granting China the market economy status in antidumping investigation while getting from China clarification, confirmation, and other marginal improvements of its tariff schedule as back. * The EU should narrow down its requests on intellectual property rights to limited range, which deliver true innovations and benefits to both European producers and Chinese consumers. * The EU should focus on services and foreign investment, by proposing an early and progressive elimination of the special safeguard instrument against Chinese exporters in exchange for additional commitments from China in services and investment. * The EU should re-focus its trade policy on the WTO, away from bilateral trade agreements. Such agreements amplify incentives among Asian countries to negotiate bilaterals between themselves, by the same token risking further marginalizing the EU. And they tend to segment even more the Chinese provincial markets, while the WTO approach would reinforce the emerging 'Chinese Single Market'. * Improving the functioning of its domestic markets would make the EU more resistant to the increasing size of the Chinese economy, for instance, in the energy or financial sectors. Such an ambitious program has no chance to succeed if it does not fill two conditions. First, it should keep a clear economic focus. Trade negotiators are not credible when they tackle political issues. Second, the EU should work with other players in the world. As such cooperation should ...
Designing its trade policy towards China, Europe should exert extreme foresightedness. Rather than to be trapped in bilateral trade balance conflicts (economically meaningless and politically hopeless), the EU should push for objectives that are attractive to its own interests, and to Chinese interests - China's economy is already too large to be influenced exclusively from outside. In this perspective, the paper offers five main proposals. * Concerning trade in goods, the EU should aim at a 'joint better enforcement' of China's WTO Accession Protocol - granting China the market economy status in antidumping investigation while getting from China clarification, confirmation, and other marginal improvements of its tariff schedule as back. * The EU should narrow down its requests on intellectual property rights to limited range, which deliver true innovations and benefits to both European producers and Chinese consumers. * The EU should focus on services and foreign investment, by proposing an early and progressive elimination of the special safeguard instrument against Chinese exporters in exchange for additional commitments from China in services and investment. * The EU should re-focus its trade policy on the WTO, away from bilateral trade agreements. Such agreements amplify incentives among Asian countries to negotiate bilaterals between themselves, by the same token risking further marginalizing the EU. And they tend to segment even more the Chinese provincial markets, while the WTO approach would reinforce the emerging 'Chinese Single Market'. * Improving the functioning of its domestic markets would make the EU more resistant to the increasing size of the Chinese economy, for instance, in the energy or financial sectors. Such an ambitious program has no chance to succeed if it does not fill two conditions. First, it should keep a clear economic focus. Trade negotiators are not credible when they tackle political issues. Second, the EU should work with other players in the world. As such cooperation should not be perceived by China as an aggressive coalition, it should involve a notable group of countries. It is thus important for the EU to go beyond the US and Japan, and to ensure the participation of medium-size countries in this cooperation. A key benefit of the presence of such medium-size countries is that they are often among the best ones in terms of governance - the great challenge faced by China, and consequently, by the entire world.
Together with a strong emphasis on deep integration, the main thrust of the EU's new trade strategy as announced in October 2006 is competitive regionalism, i.e. the competition between different jurisdictions which seek strategic advantages for themselves through the conclusion of bilateral agreements with priority trading partners. This article outlines the new trade strategy in the light of the changes caused by the Lisbon Treaty. It then presents a detailed positioning of the EU in the geography of international trade policy.
Despite the announcement of a 'new trade strategy', EU agricultural trade policy has exhibited considerable consistency over several decades, always conditional on the CAP regime and the course of its reform. A 25-year, heavily subsidised transition, will shortly see European farmers (thanks to income support of up to 50% of their total income), able to enter the world market without export subsidies. Meanwhile the EC expects 'partner' countries in Africa (and the Caribbean and the Pacific) with still underdeveloped infrastructures, and provided with relatively trivial subsidies, to complete a similar process in a decade or so. The economic partnership agreement (EPA) negotiations are based on a shift from the Lomé Convention's non-reciprocity commitment to a basic regime of free trade between the EU and EPA regions, involving liberalisation of trade in goods, trade-related areas and services. Whereas Europe has already effectively integrated, few African regions have yet got very far in regional integration, but the EC is forcing the pace in negotiations so that there is a risk that integration will be with the EU rather than within a country's own region, and on the EU's terms. A 'development dimension' adds an element of window-dressing (or sugaring of the pill). This article considers the development programmes that the EU is promising in order to address infrastructural constraints in the partner countries, and the costs of adjustment to free trade, in particular the loss of state revenues generated from tariffs. The article concludes with an attempt to foresee the likely outcomes and implications of the negotiations, including the undermining of government revenues and the consequent increase in reliance on the private sector for many services, accelerated deindustrialisation, and the inhibiting of first-stage processing of agricultural commodities, the undermining of regional integration, the economic 'recolonisation' of Africa and the harming of efforts to promote national exploitation of economic resources.
Trade policy constitutes a significant part of the European Union's (EU) foreign policy. The EU's emphasis on global trade liberalization in the 21st century is most evident through its ever increasing number of modern, deep, bilateral trade agreements. However, aspects of EU trade policy and bilateral agreements are hotly contested. We examine this by comparing the rhetoric employed by European civil society organizations from 2013 through 2020. While the focus of contestation and the rhetorical strategy remained fairly consistent, the effects of contestation (politicization, institutionalization of new processes) changed, largely due to the presence or absence of negotiations on a deep trade agreement with an economic and political equal perceived to have greater bargaining power. This study contributes to the literature on norm contestation and politicization by providing empirical evidence that mere contestation is insufficient for politicization, and by showing show that perceived bargaining strength influences trade politicization.
The European Union (EU) often conditions preferential access to its market on compliance with Non-Trade Policy Objectives (NTPOs), including human rights and labor and environmental standards. In this paper, we first systematically document the coverage of NTPOs across the main tools of EU trade policy: its (association and non-association) trade agreements and Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) programs. We then discuss the extent to which the EU can use these tools as a 'carrot-and-stick' mechanism to promote NTPOs in trading partners. We argue that, within trade agreements, the EU has limited scope to extend or restrict tariff preferences to 'reward good behavior' or 'punish bad behavior' on NTPOs, partly because multilateral rules require members to eliminate tariffs on substantially all trade. By contrast, GSP preferences are granted on a unilateral basis, and can thus more easily be extended or limited, depending on compliance with NTPOs. Our analysis also suggests that the commercial interests of the EU inhibit the full pursuit of NTPOs in its trade agreements and GSP programs.
The European Union (EU) often conditions preferential access to its market upon compliance by its trading partners with Non-Trade Policy Objectives (NTPOs), including human rights and labor and environmental standards. We systematically document the coverage of NTPOs in EU trade agreements and in its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). We then examine the extent to which trade agreements and GSP programs can be used to promote NTPOs. Preferential trade agreements are negotiated under multilateral rules, which require members to eliminate all tariffs reciprocally. As a result, once a trade agreement enters into force, the EU cannot easily restrict or extend access to its market so as to "punish bad behavior" or "reward good behavior" on NTPOs by its trading partners. By contrast, GSP preferences are granted on a unilateral basis, so they can be limited or extended, depending on compliance with NTPOs. EU GSP programs can thus provide a carrot-and-stick mechanism to promote NTPOs in partner countries.
The European Union (EU) often conditions preferential access to its market upon compliance by its trading partners with Non-Trade Policy Objectives (NTPOs), including human rights and labor and environmental standards. We systematically document the coverage of NTPOs in EU trade agreements and in its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). We then examine the extent to which trade agreements and GSP programs can be used to promote NTPOs. Preferential trade agreements are negotiated under multilateral rules, which require members to eliminate all tariffs reciprocally. As a result, once a trade agreement enters into force, the EU cannot easily restrict or extend access to its market so as to "punish bad behavior" or "reward good behavior" on NTPOs by its trading partners. By contrast, GSP preferences are granted on a unilateral basis, so they can be limited or extended, depending on compliance with NTPOs. EU GSP programs can thus provide a carrot-and-stick mechanism to promote NTPOs in partner countries. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published