The Rise (and Fall?) of the EU’s Performance in the Multilateral Trading System

Abstract

The multilateral trading system represents an excellent case for analyzing the factors influencing the EU’s performance in international institutions, because of the marked changes that have taken place both in the EU and in the multilateral trading system over the past six decades. Moreover, trade is the international policy arena in which the EU has greatest power resources and greatest institutional capacity. Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, the EU has long performed well in the multilateral trading system. The article, however, argues that internal changes in the late 1980s and early 1990s enabled the EU to advance a more ambitious agenda in the multilateral trading system. The enhanced ambition translated temporarily into enhanced performance within the multilateral trading system, but this was short-lived as the emergence of new trading powers hostile to the EU’s agenda in the late 1990s resulted in the erosion of its ambitious agenda in the Doha Development Round.

Key words:

• European Union
• international institutions
• multilateral trading system
• performance
• trade policy

Notes

*Number at the start of major rounds (includes those that joined the year the round began); GATT contracting parties based on those that are still members in 1994 (128), which means that some contracting parties are missing (the effect is greatest for earlier rounds). Sources: www.wto.org/english/theWTO_e/gattmem_e.htm; www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org6_e.htm.

1. Interview with a member of the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee, Brussels, 30 March 2011.

2. Interview with a member of the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee, Brussels, 30 March 2011.

3. Interviews with a former senior Commission trade official (London, 10 March 2005) and a German trade official (Brussels, 16 March 2005).

4. The multilateral trading system also contributes an impetus to CAP reform (Daugbjerg & Swinbank 2009: 18; Roederer-Rynning 2010: 194).

5. Meunier’s argument specifically hinges on mixed competence requiring ratification by all member states. With the Treaty of Lisbon this is no longer an issue, although unanimity does still apply to a few trade issues. In any event, a qualified majority is quite a high decision threshold, particularly as the practice is for the Council to seek a consensus on trade policy.

6. For a concise survey of bargaining theory see Moravcsik (1998: 60–67).

7. Conceição (2010: 1123) contends that in the case of the Doha Round, negotiations on agriculture divisions within the EU undermined the Commission’s negotiating leverage. This assessment, however, discounts what the EU hoped to gain in other sectors, neglects the relative bargaining power of the other parties (their best alternatives to negotiated agreement), and overlooks that the Commission eventually stopped making concessions in a bid to secure a deal.

8. With reference to other types of negotiations, see Price 1998; Risse 2000.

9. It is worth noting that (by his own admission) Dür’s (2010: 214–15) analysis does not do a good job of explaining the outcome of the Uruguay Round.