Suchergebnisse

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.

The EU has famously been described as plagued by a 'joint decision trap': Member States are obliged to work together yet have difficulties making comprehensive steps forward given high decision-making thresholds. This contribution states that against the background of the politicization of European integration, the prospect of a 'politicized decision trap' (PDT) emerges, where de facto veto positions develop that cannot easily be accommodated in the spotlight. To account for the observation that deadlock is often avoided, even in the face of visible conflict, the literature on exiting the JDT is rehabilitated by categorizing mechanisms as 'anticipating', 'engaging' or 'defusing' vetoes. Empirically, this framework is applied to EU trade policy, as several EU trade agreements in the past decade were (expected to become) confronted with the PDT, yet experienced remarkable resilience. By reviewing contemporary EU trade literature, various mechanisms are identified that have helped the EU evade the PDT.

The EU has famously been described as plagued by a 'joint decision trap': Member States are obliged to work together yet have difficulties making comprehensive steps forward given high decision-making thresholds. This contribution states that against the background of the politicization of European integration, the prospect of a 'politicized decision trap' (PDT) emerges, where de facto veto positions develop that cannot easily be accommodated in the spotlight. To account for the observation that deadlock is often avoided, even in the face of visible conflict, the literature on exiting the JDT is rehabilitated by categorizing mechanisms as 'anticipating', 'engaging' or 'defusing' vetoes. Empirically, this framework is applied to EU trade policy, as several EU trade agreements in the past decade were (expected to become) confronted with the PDT, yet experienced remarkable resilience. By reviewing contemporary EU trade literature, various mechanisms are identified that have helped the EU evade the PDT.

The EU trade policy is increasingly confronted with demands for more transparency. This article aims to investigate how transparency takes shape in EU trade policy. First, we operationalize the concept of transparency along two dimensions: a process dimension and an actor dimension. We then apply this framework to analysis of EU Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). After analyzing transparency in relation to FTAs from the perspective of the institutional actors (Commission, Council and Parliament), the different instruments and policies that grant the public actors (civil society and citizens) access to information and documents about EU FTAs are explored by discussing Regulation 1049/2001, which provides for public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, and the role of the European Ombudsman. The article is based on an analysis of official documents, assessments in the academic literature and case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The ultimate aim is to assess current initiatives and identify relevant gaps in the EU's transparency policies. This article argues that the EU has made significant progress in fostering transparency in the negotiation phase of FTAs, but less in the implementation phase.

Non-trade issues are gaining increasing importance in the EU's trade policy. The case of agricultural multifunctionality is an example of the EU trade policy's approach in dealing strategically and structurally with non-trade issues in international trade. In the context of the Doha Round, the concept has been of minor direct importance despite its prominent rhetorical promotion at the beginning of the negotiations. Indirectly, the concept has had a more significant impact on the negotiations as it allows the EU to maintain an overall high level of agricultural subventions due to its compliance with WTO rules of non-trade-distorting support. This indirect impact, however, weakens the EU's negotiating position as it focuses the discussion on traditional agricultural support and puts the EU in a defensive position instead of allowing an offensive promotion of its concept of agricultural multifunctionality. It can furthermore be argued that the strategic use of multifunctionality in the Doha Round does not generally support the EU's negotiation objectives due to divided competitive advantages on multifunctionality among WTO Members. One of the EU trade policy's strategies in facing this situation can be found in a shift of agricultural non-trade concerns beyond the WTO framework towards a level of legally non-binding, private-market regulation. This shift can also be seen in the structural impact of agricultural multifunctionality on EU trade policy, illustrated by the semi-formal Civil Society Dialogue of DG Trade and the European Commission's Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. Adapted from the source document.

This editorial provides an introduction to the thematic issue "Politicization of EU Trade Policy Across Time and Space." The academic editors place the issue in the context of the current literature, introduce the contributions, and discuss how the articles, individually and jointly, add to the state of the art.

Since the argumentative turn in EU studies, research has shown that civil society activists can challenge frames promoted by EU institutions and incumbent groups, and influence public opinion in the EU. However, most studies of civil society mobilisation on EU issues have focused on the vertical framing of issues from Brussels to national capitals, rarely analysing mobilisation beyond Brussels. This article builds upon ongoing research on Spanish civil society activism on the TTIP (Bouza & Oleart, 2018) and framing EU issues on Twitter (Bouza & Tuñón, 2018), contributing to the study of the role of national activists in the horizontal translation of EU-wide mobilisation to national publics. We argue that national actors play an influential role in the discursive struggle to define 'Europe' and the EU in the (national) public spheres (Díez Medrano, 2003). Building on our previous analysis of national activism on TTIP in Spain, we analyse whether activists have engaged in a process of frame bridging (Snow et al., 1986), in order to expand the mobilisation against TTIP towards new issues and constituencies relating to the broader trade strategy of the EU. The present research addresses the role of the Spanish anti-TTIP social movement in the emergence, circulation and bridging of critical frames on the TTIP negotiations in the Spanish Twitter sphere. The article combines quantitative and qualitative methods –network analysis and framing analysis– in order to analyse the role of the @NoAlTTIP network in the building and diffusion of frames challenging the EU institutions discourse on trade in the Spanish context.