Missing in Action? France and the Politicization of Trade and Investment Agreements

Abstract

Negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) and for the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada have provoked massive mobilization throughout Europe, both on the streets and online. Yet France, long at the epicenter of anti-globalization and anti-Americanism, has played a surprisingly modest role in the mobilization campaign against these agreements. This article asks why France did not contribute to anti-TTIP mobilization and, more broadly, how patterns of French mobilization over trade have changed over the past two decades. Using comparative-historical analysis, we explore to what extent this puzzling French reaction can be traced to changing attitudes towards the US, agenda-shaping by the French government, and transformations in the venues and techniques of social mobilization. We thus contribute to the growing literature on the politicization of trade agreements and offer insights into the links between domestic and international politics.

Towards Explaining Varying Degrees of Politicization of EU Trade Agreement Negotiations

“…And secondly, the insistence of EU member state legislatures to ratify all external EU trade policy agreements (whether multilateral WTO or bilateral) has been a decade-old constant of EU trade policy making (Gstöhl & De Bièvre, 2018;Meunier, 2005). This de facto member state veto over crucial issues, can be (Young & Peterson, 2006), as well as of the deliberate strategy to include issues of socalled mixed EU and member state competence into the negotiation mandate so as to make national parliamentary approval mandatory (Meunier & Roederer-Rynning, 2020). Parliamentary opportunities to voice and mobilize opposition towards trade agreements thus constitute important background conditions for politicization, yet, in and of themselves do not suffice to account for when political actors jump to action to capitalize on them.…”

The Selective Politicization of Transatlantic Trade Negotiations

“…Surprisingly, most efforts to explain the causes as well as the variation of trade politicization stubbornly focus on EU level institutions and actors (business associations, civil society organizations and trade unions). Despite scholars' acknowledgement of European governments' significance in shaping the common EU trade negotiation positions (Dür & Zimmermann, 2007, p. 783;Laursen & Roederer-Rynning, 2017, p. 765), the domestic level, 'where trade policy making actually begins and where member governments have to find negotiation positions that reflect their own domestic constraints' (van Loon, 2018a, p. 166), is-excepting a handful of studies (Adriaensen, 2016;Bauer, 2016;Bollen, 2018;Bouza & Oleart, 2018;De Bièvre, 2018;Meunier & Roederer-Rynning, 2020)-either mistakenly replaced by viewing the EU level as the domestic level, or plainly ignored. This lack of attention on the domestic level is astonishing as it is the level where trade policy making begins and where governments are constrained in finding negotiation positions originating from domestic societal demands.…”

The Multilevel Politics of Trade Jörg Broschek and Patricia Goff, eds., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020, pp. 400.

“…A good scholarly endeavour should not only provide new insights but also leave the reader with new questions and ideas; this book does not disappoint. Focusing primarily on state–society relations, Gabriel Siles-Brügge and Michael Strange draw attention to municipal contestation of EU trade policy and trade agreements, including in France during transatlantic trade negotiations (challenging the findings of Meunier and Roderer-Rynning [2020]); no other chapter mentions unitary states. Yet there is no inherent reason why multilevel contestation should occur only in federal systems.…”