Enhancement of the European Parliament's Monitoring for Better Coherence between Trade Policy and Non-Trade Policy Objectives (Ntpos)

Abstract

Since the Treaty of Lisbon, trade policy has become an explicit part of the EU's external policy and integrated into the general framework of the EU´s external policy, but must also be in conformity with internal policies. Thus, trade policy is subject to a requirement of multiple coherence. Beyond constitutional obligations, other drivers work for the inclusion of nongenuine commercial policy objectives in trade policy, such as the orientation of contemporary trade politics towards the behind the border issues of national regulation, so that trade policy became closely intertwined with domestic regulatory policy. Therefore the actors primarily responsible for legislation, i.e. parliaments, advocate for their extended participation in determining trade policy, and rightly so for reasons of transparency, control and political inclusiveness. Parliaments thus become actors of respect for and positive consideration of non-commercial policy objectives in trade policy, which applies as well to the European Parliament (EP). Hence, an institutional design of policy formulation cycles and decisionmaking in EU trade policy that strives for better coherence of trade concerns with NTPOs must focus on strengthening the influence of the EP and improve its participatory rights in decisionmaking and its control and monitoring mechanisms. Consequently, the present paper derives proposals for improving EP´s monitoring mechanisms for the benefit of non-trade policy objectives (NTPOs) in trade policy from an analysis of weaknesses in the negotiation and implementation stage of trade policy.

The EU's strategic autonomy in times of politicisation of international trade: The future of commission accountability

“…Hence, the EP was made almost the equal of the Council in this respect. (Weiß, 2020(Weiß, , 2021. Also in autonomous trade policy, the fundamental rules have to be adopted in the ordinary legislative procedure so that the EP has a full say.…”

“…Consequently, calls were raised to give parliaments more capacities to determine trade policy for democratic legitimacy reasons (Jančić, 2016;Petersmann, 2017;Young & Peterson, 2006), including greater scrutiny over implementation. With regard to EU trade policy, thus the need for more effective EP involvement in internationalised decision-making by treaty bodies established in bilateral agreements has already been recognised (Alemanno, 2015;Weiß, 2018Weiß, , 2021. Even the Commission became a proponent of strengthened EP monitoring, announcing an 'enhanced partnership' inter alia with the EP to implement trade agreements better (Commission, 2015, p. 15).…”