The political economy of ‘normative power’ Europe: EU environmental leadership in international biotechnology regulation

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the transformation of the European Union from a laggard to a leader in the international politics of biotechnology regulation. The emergence of EU leadership in global environmental politics during the 1990s seems to support recent arguments about the distinctive nature of the EU as a ‘normative power’ in international relations. However, as this paper argues, this perspective lacks historical depth and fails to capture tensions between competing principles and conflict among domestic interest groups in Europe. The paper calls for a more critical reading of the normative power argument and identifies shifts in the domestic political economy of agricultural biotechnology as the key factors behind the EU's support for a precautionary international regime on trade in genetically modified organisms.

Keywords:

• Biotechnology regulation
• environmental policy
• EU foreign policy
• genetically modified organisms
• normative power
• political economy

Notes

1. An earlier version of this paper appeared in the Center for European Studies Working Paper series. Research for this paper has benefited from financial and institutional support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the London School of Economics and the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. The author would like to thank the government, industry and civil society representatives who were willing to be interviewed during and after the Cartagena Protocol negotiations, as well as three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. The usual disclaimers apply.

2. ‘European Union’ (EU) is uniformly used for stylistic reasons to refer to the European Community before, and the EU after, entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993.

3. European Commission, Sustainable Development website, available at http://ec.europa.eu/comm/sustainable/welcome/index_en.htm.

4. The European Commission's Directorate-General (DG) Environment was formerly known as DG XI, and is referred to as DG Environment for stylistic reasons.

5. The biosafety talks fell into the category of ‘mixed negotiations,’ with member states and the EU having concurrent power to negotiate and sign the agreement. Unlike in other environmental negotiations, the strong trade dimension of the biosafety negotiations allowed the Commission to become the main spokesperson of the EU during the end phase of the talks (Bail, et al. 2002: 168–71; on mixed competence, see Bretherton and Vogler 2005: ch. 3).

6. The EU's final negotiation mandate for the 2000 Montreal conference was agreed by the EU Environment Ministers on 13 December 1999, and was made public in a press release on 27 January 2000 (2235th Council Meeting – Environment, Brussels, 13–14 December 1999. Conseil/99/409).

7. The US, together with Canada and Argentina, eventually launched a WTO case against the EU's GMO moratorium in 2003, which the EU lost in first instance in 2006. The Cartagena Protocol was cited by the EU in its defence but was not the subject of the ruling itself.