Towards Explaining Varying Degrees of Politicization of EU Trade Agreement Negotiations

Abstract

Over the last decade, European Union (EU) trade agreement negotiations in the form of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada have been strongly contested. By contrast, many other EU trade negotiations have sailed on with far less politicization, or barely any at all. In this contribution, we assess a series of plausible explanation for these very varying degrees of politicization across EU trade agreement negotiations—conceived of as the combination of polarization of opinions, salience given to them in public debate, and the expansion of the number of societal actors involved therein. Through a review of existing explanations, we show how each of these explanations faces a set of challenges. In the third section, we argue it is useful to conceive of these existing explanations as structural background conditions enabling agency on the part of interest group and civil society organizations. We therefore close by sketching how literature on the relationship between interest group mobilization and public opinion could inform further comparative research on trade policy negotiations, and on politicization of EU policy making in general.

The Saga Continues: contestation of EU trade policy

“…We show that CSOs continued to contest trade policy in the period 2017-19. There was similar contestation in both periods, one with politicization (2013-16) and one without (2017)(2018)(2019), indicating that negotiating a deep trade agreement with a political and economic equal that is perceived as having greater bargaining power is a politicization trigger (De Bièvre & Poletti, 2020, call for research on triggers). 1 The next section presents our theory and methodology.…”

Competing Logics of Integration: EU Trade Post-Brexit

“…In particular, the size and strength of the US market provided the first significant challenge to EU market leverage in shaping the content and form of negotiating chapters; an element that was readily noticed by public organizations invested in the protection of environmental and food standards across the EU (Buonanno, 2017). Although TTIP has since been abandoned, largely due to the change in the US administration in 2016, the legacy of early discussions on TTIP negotiations served to expand and mobilize several societal actors involved in raising awareness on EU external trade activities (De Biève & Poletti, 2020).…”

The Geopoliticization of European Trade and Investment Policy

“…Trade is no exception: the TTIP negotiations provoked unprecedented mobilization in several European countries, starting in Germany, followed by the politicization of the CETA negotiations between the EU and Canada (Bouza and Oleart, ; Chan and Crawford, ; De Bièvre and Poletti, ; De Ville and Siles‐Brügge, ; Laursen and Roederer‐Rynning, ; Magnette, ; Young, , ). EU trade policy literature has been trying to unpack the causes and implications of this process (De Bievre and Poletti, ; Eliasson and Huet, ; Garcia‐Duran et al, ; Laursen and Roederer‐Rynning, ; Young, ).…”