Domestic Politics in EU External Economic Relations: US-EU Competition in Trade
The European Union (EU) is a key player in international trade relations with its foreign trade policy having a great influence on shaping the international political economy. EU trade policy, however, is equally shaped in response to the trade policies o
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1 Introduction During the past decade, the world trading system has undergone a profound transformation. On the one hand, the uncertainty surrounding of the conclusion of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) within the institutional framework of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has dampened confidence among countries about the multilateral approach to trade liberalisation. On the other hand, free trade agreements (henceforth FTAs)1 whereby members exchange preferential market commitments are proliferating.2 In this “market and competition oriented” environment (Schirm 2002, p. 2; Baccini and Du¨r 2012, p. 57) with “its emphasis on exports and open markets” (Thiel 1998, p. 61) as hallmarks of the so-called ‘new regionalism’ (Ethier 1998, pp. 1150–1152), FTAs have become the prominent
I am very grateful to Astrid Boening, Yuan-Juhn Chiao, Michael Franke, Jan-Frederik Kremer, Stefan Schirm, Katerina Smejkalova, Andre´ van Loon, Vanessa Vaughn and the participants of the ‘Forschungs- und Abschlusskolloquium’ for their helpful input, comments and/or suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter. 1
FTAs are defined as legally binding arrangements between two or more countries, through which these countries give each other preferential treatment in trade that eliminates trade protection among members. At the same time, each member keeps its own tariff structure in trade with third countries. Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs), Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) or FTAs are often synonymously applied to describe trade liberalisation on a regional or bilateral basis. For the purpose of consistency, the term FTA will be used throughout this chapter. 2 Thereby making exemptions to the non-discrimination and most-favoured-nation (MFN) principles of the WTO. A. van Loon (*) Chair of International Politics, Institute of Political Science, Ruhr-Universita¨t Bochum, Universita¨tsstraße 150, D-44801 Bochum, Germany e-mail: [email protected] A. Boening et al. (eds.), Global Power Europe - Vol. 1, Global Power Shift, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-32412-3_13, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
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mode of promoting trade liberalisation and market integration (Heydon and Woolcock 2009, p. 3). This chapter is inspired by the transformed international trade panorama, specifically by the observation that the EU has accomplished FTAs with selected emerging markets, first in Latin America with Mexico (EU-Mexico FTA, also “Global Agreement”) and subsequently in Asia with the Republic of Korea (EU-Korea FTA, also “KOREU FTA”), where previously there were none. In these two regions, the EU has aimed to achieve the highest possible degree of trade liberalisation by targeting emerging markets with high market potential and high rates of economic growth (European Commission 2006, p. 10). It is nonetheless surprising that the EU has accomplished FTAs with two smaller emerging markets with less market potential and economic growth compared to the larger emerging markets, such as China, Brazil and India. These latter markets w
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