Supporters’ responses to contested trade negotiations: the European Commission’s rhetoric on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership^*

* This article has been presented at different stages of completion in three conferences: Academic Association for Contemporary European Studies September 2016 (London), European Union Studies Association May 2017 (Miami) and European International Studies Association September 2017 (Barcelona). The authors would like to thank the participants for their constructive and useful feedback, and in particular the discussants of the panels as well as Matthias Goetz, Maria Garcia, Robert Ackrill and Miguel Otero. We are also grateful to Alasdair Young and participants in a 2016 workshop in Atlanta for comments on earlier drafts, and to four anonymous reviewers for useful feedback on our initial submission. Research for this article was supported by the National R+D Plan of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competiveness (CSO2016-79205-P).

Abstract

Negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) commenced in 2013, and soon became the most controversial bilateral trade agreement negotiations ever attempted by the European Union (EU). When trying to understand the escalating debate over the proposed agreement, most analyses have highlighted opposition to the deal, especially from civil society organizations. However, a full understanding of the debate surrounding TTIP requires analysis of supporters’ responses, as these changed in response to strategies used by opponents of the agreement. This article uses a novel approach in trade policy scholarship—rhetorical analysis—to focus on the European Commission Trade Directorate’s response to contestation over TTIP. Drawing on work on the ‘rhetoric of reaction’, this article identifies the rhetorical strategies used by EU trade commissioners from 2013 to 2016. It outlines the evolution of the rhetoric and accompanying changes in process and policy, providing insights on the impact of TTIP politicization on the guiding principles of the EU’s trade policy.

Notes

* This article has been presented at different stages of completion in three conferences: Academic Association for Contemporary European Studies September 2016 (London), European Union Studies Association May 2017 (Miami) and European International Studies Association September 2017 (Barcelona). The authors would like to thank the participants for their constructive and useful feedback, and in particular the discussants of the panels as well as Matthias Goetz, Maria Garcia, Robert Ackrill and Miguel Otero. We are also grateful to Alasdair Young and participants in a 2016 workshop in Atlanta for comments on earlier drafts, and to four anonymous reviewers for useful feedback on our initial submission. Research for this article was supported by the National R+D Plan of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competiveness (CSO2016-79205-P).

¹ Though choosing to focus on the same key issues, and undertaking largely similar actions to further their cause, reformists, such as consumer organizations and trade unions, would accept an agreement with significant alterations on key issues, while rejectionists, such as StopTTIP! and War on Want, oppose an agreement of any kind. In this article we do not differentiate between these two opposition groups, for two reasons. First, because the overlap between the groups means the distinction did not substantially affect the debate. Second, because the Commission’s rhetoric was largely aimed at a third party, the public.

² Interviews with Commission advisers and business representatives in Brussels and Berlin, April and May 2016, indicated that the Commission was surprised and disappointed by the lack of support it received from member states.

³ Tweets that include hashtag words generally favourable to the agreement only made up roughly 1% of total tweets, whereas tweets advocating a clear no (through hashtags like #stopttip, #nottip, #noalttip and others) represented 99% of total TTIP-related activity (Coifu and Stefano 2016). YouTube was similarly dominated by opponents (Eliasson and Garcia-Duran 2018).

⁴ TABC representative, Brussels, March 2017.

⁵ Although the three theses are contradictory, Hirschman‘s theory expressly accommodates the likelihood that their arguments can be used in the course of the same debate, sometimes even by the same person or group. Shorten (2015) has argued that Hirschman’s conception of rhetoric has two limitations: first, the subject matter of rhetoric is conceived as an ex post facto rationalization and, second, it focuses on logos. In other words, Hirschman’s taxonomy assumes that supporters and opponents each have a strategy (an interest prior to the articulation of the discourse) and then try to imprint their arguments with (quasi-) logic.

⁶ See for example American Federation on Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, ‘U.S.–EU Free Trade Agreement (TTIP)’, <http://www.aflcio.org/Issues/Trade/U.S.-EU-Free-Trade-Agreement-TTIP>, accessed 2 January 2016; German IG Metal ‘Freihandelsabkommen sofort stoppen’, <http://www.fr-online.de/wirtschaft/freihandelsabkommen-eu-usa--freihandelsabkommen-sofort-stoppen-,1472780,26460308.html>, accessed 3 March 2016.

⁷ On the latter see for example DeVille and Siles-Brügges (2016).

⁸ De Gucht specifically referred to declarations by Mr Beckmann from the German teachers’ association on how ‘German teachers could be replaced by American apps’ with TTIP (3 July 2014, 4).

⁹ The year 2016 started with speeches with rather telling titles: ‘TTIP: what consumers have to gain’ (26 January 2016) and ‘TTIP and EU trade: listening, learning and changing’ (22 February 2016).

¹⁰ While the personalities of the commissioners (De Gucht was widely seen as brash, Malmström as more conciliatory) may have impacted on the style and content of the Commission’s rhetoric, the focus here is on how, and to what extent, rhetoric changed.

¹¹ Schimmelfenning (2001) and Grube (2016) point out that changes in rhetoric may have lasting effects (‘rhetorical entrapment’ and ‘rhetorical path dependency’, respectively).

¹² ‘[W]e cannot get our members interested,’ one CSO representative said. Interview, Brussels, May 2016. In 2017 we enquired at the European Parliament, and the International Trade Committee had received only a handful of enquiries about the EU–Japan negotiations in 2015 and 2016. Email correspondence available from authors.