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.
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.
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: "This paper analyses Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations in order to assess how the move towards tighter economic integration within the EU-US strategic partnership impacts on legislative-executive relations in EU trade policy. The analysis examines the institutional, substantive and party political dimensions of national parliaments' scrutiny of the Common Commercial Policy. Based on insights into both domestic and EU channels of parliamentary monitoring of TTIP negotiations, the paper argues that, although the government remains the central object of democratic control, the involvement of national parliaments in transatlantic trade extends to encompass the EU's own transatlantic and trade policies. This is rooted in the legislatures' legal capacity to constrain the executive in the negotiation, conclusion and, where applicable, ratification phases of EU trade agreements. It is argued that national parliamentary influence takes the shape of politicisation of the legitimacy of the expected policy outcomes of these agreements." (Seite 202)
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 with Europe is currently more important for the African continent, and nearly every single country in it, than any other international economic links. Africa's future trade relationship with the European Union (EU) is now being decided in negotiations which are provoking intense debate, and to understand what is at issue it is necessary to locate these negotiations in the context of the EU's wider trade policy. This policy was recently reiterated in a more coherent and focused form in the European Commission's (EC's) October 2006 proposal for a new trade strategy. This paper seeks to review the main elements of this 'new' strategy before looking at how it impacts on the EU's approach to the negotiations for 'Economic Partnership Agreements' (EPAs) with four groupings of African countries.1 It closes by reviewing what this will probably mean for the Africa-EU trade relationship in the future in the context of the major trends in the current processes of negotiations.
