The legitimacy of free trade agreements as tools of EU democracy promotion

Abstract

This article questions whether the European Union (EU) strategy of using free trade agreements (FTAs) as tools of democracy promotion is, currently, normatively coherent and legitimate. It focuses on FTAs with proximate autocracies and makes four main claims. First, FTAs raise significant legitimacy concerns in that they can ordinarily be expected to generate both economic ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in the target country without democratic processes in place to legitimate these costs. Second, the EU risks empowering autocrats (rather than catalysing democratic transition) in the way it negotiates FTAs. Third, ‘leverage’ strategies of withholding or suspending cooperation as a result of violations of democratic and human rights norms are applied inconsistently by the EU, undermining leverage credibility. Fourth, the best-case impact of regulatory convergence with the EU acquis communautaire on the democratic character of sector-level policymaking is mixed: increased transparency and accountability can improve democratic credentials, while, paradoxically, increased stakeholder participation is normatively suspect in the absence of a democratic framework.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Tom Theuns is postdoctoral researcher at University College Roosevelt, Utrecht University, working on the Horizon 2020 project ETHOS. His research focuses on the intersect between democratic theory and European Union studies, particularly in the context of foreign policy, and on the right to vote. His PhD, defended in 2017 at Sciences Po Paris, examined the Legitimacy of EU Democracy Promotion in the European Neighbourhood Policy. He has pubished articles in journals such as the Journal of European Integration, the Journal of Contemporary European Research and the Australian Journal of Politics and History. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 This article is a revised version of part of the fourth chapter of my PhD, ‘The legitimacy of EU democracy promotion in the neighbourhood’, which I defended in October 2017 at Sciences Po Paris. I would like to thank my supervisor, Justine Lacroix, as well as my examiners, Ben Crum and Kalypso Nicolaïdis, and jury members Ariel Colonomos and Annabelle Lever for invaluable comments. I would also like to thank the participants of the panel ‘Justice in Europe’ at the 2018 European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group Conference on the EU for comments, particularly co-panelists Joseph Lacey, Glyn Morgan, Barbara Oomen, Orsolya Salát, John Pitseys, Andrea Sangiovanni, Juri Viehoff and Bertjan Wolthuis.

2 Some might argue that FTAs ought not be considered tools of democracy promotion. However, the EU does consider them in this light, speaking of such agreements as ‘key instruments in support of democratic transformation’ (European Commission 2013, 15) and ‘democratic reform’ (European Commission 2011, 9). Furthermore, FTAs and democracy promotion are both, at least independently, unquestionably goals of EU foreign policy; it thus makes sense to examine the coherence of these two goals with one another.

3 SAAs have been signed with Albania (2009), Bosnia and Herzegovina (2015), Kosovo (2016), Macedonia (2004), Montenegro (2010) and Serbia (2013).

4 In the context of the ENP, AAs have been signed and are in force with Algeria (2005), Egypt (2004), Georgia (2016), Israel (2000), Jordan (2002), Lebanon (2006), Moldova (2016), Morocco (2000), Tunisia (1998) and Ukraine (2017). The EU negotiated an AA with Armenia in 2013, but this did not come into force given Armenia’s decision to join the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. Negotiations for an AA with Azerbaijan were stalled due to tensions regarding the EU’s position in the Azerbaijan–Armenia dispute. The AA with Syria, initialled in 2004 (and again in 2008), has not yet been signed due to political tensions and, subsequently, the Syrian Civil War. Turkey, as a state with whom the EU is still (at least officially) pursuing future membership, has its own AAs outside the ENP framework: the 1963 Ankara Agreement and the 1995 Customs Union.

5 DCFTAs are currently in force as part of the AAs with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The European Commission has a mandate to negotiate DCFTAs with Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, though it is currently negotiating only with Tunisia (Morocco requested negotiations to be paused in 2014).

6 I define ‘non-democracies’ (or ‘autocracies’—I use the terms interchangeably) as those countries which have scored less than 7/12 points in any of the five previous years (so 2013–2017 for a 2018 coding) on the Freedom in the World Index’s sub-category A, ‘electoral process’, and/or have scored less than 20/40 points in any of the past five years over the entire category ‘political rights’. The data are available on the Index’s website, <https://freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world>, following the link for Aggregate and Subcategory Scores, 2006–2016 (Excel). The inverse of this formula is what the Freedom in the World Index used (albeit per year rather than over five years) to code what they call ‘electoral democracies’ prior to the methodological review of 2016–2017, which was first applied to the 2018 index. On the above definition, the proximate states Algeria, Egypt, Georgia, Jordan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Macedonia, Morocco, Syria and Turkey were coded as non-democracies in 2017 (using 2012–2016 data). Other autocracies proximate to the EU that the EU is not currently pursuing AAs with, but to whom the normative arguments of this article would apply if it were to, are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, the Gaza Strip, Libya and the West Bank.

7 In fact, evidence even for the aggregate positive effects of the economic liberalization policies associated with EU FTAs is mixed (Easterly 2001; Mkandawire 2002; Vreeland 2003; Barro and Lee 2005), especially if we consider income inequality (Nel 2003; Azzimonti et al 2014).

8 I thank an anonymous reviewer at the Cambridge Review of International Affairs for this point.

9 While Azerbaijan does not have an AA with the EU, it is in the process of negotiating a new comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement to replace the 1996 Partnership and Cooperation Agreement.

10 As I have pointed out, Azerbaijan ultimately backed out of the AA negotiations unilaterally to pursue further economic cooperation with Russia.

11 The arguments of this paper do not apply to Moldova directly, as Moldova is not considered an autocratic state on the criteria described in the introduction. The example is nevertheless illustrative, and was chosen in light of the data reported by Montesano et al (2016).

12 ‘Full’ and ‘partial’ here refer to whether or not states are sufficiently democratic in terms of their government and governance, not the extent to which they are.

13 The example is taken from Freyburg et al (2015, 77–78).

14 Governance-level transparency is more complex. Jon Elster’s (2013) argument in Securities against misrule is convincing on this point—that more transparency of a democratic deliberation or decision-making process can encourage grandstanding by participants and impede constructive compromises between representatives of different interests.

Additional information

Funding

Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (since February 2018).