Externalising internal policies via conflict: the EU’s indirect influence on international institutions

ABSTRACT

This paper identifies an innovative mechanism of how the EU’s internal policies could lead to policy adaptations within international institutions. Having authority over the single market, the EU regulates important market actors whose behaviour is oftentimes crucial for the effectiveness of global cooperation projects. By intentionally or unintentionally creating a vertical regulatory conflict with an international institution, the EU might influence the behaviour of European market actors in a way that it undermines the effectiveness of the international institution. To preserve its effectiveness, the external institution is forced to adapt towards European internal policies to dissolve conflict and to enable mutual compliance for European market actors. The potential of the mechanism is explored in two cases: The EU’s externalisation of data protection to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the externalisation of European fundamental rights to the UN Security Council. The process tracing finds that the EU is able to carve out authority from international institutions under specific conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• externalisation
• Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
• Kadi case
• Market Power Europe
• regulatory conflicts

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Thomas Gehring, Kevin Urbanski, Linda Spielmann as well as the three anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments and suggestions on drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ICANN, Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, Para 4, available at: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/policy-2012-02-25-en.

2 ICANN, Data Protection/Privacy-Correspondence: Letter from Jetse Sprey to Göran Marby regarding Gemeente Amsterdam FRL Registry B.V., available at: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/sprey-to-Marby-9oct17-en.pdf.

3 Formerly the Court of First Instance.

4 Case C–402/05 P and C–415/05, P. Kadi and Al Barakaat International Foundation v. Council and Commission [2008] ECR I–6351.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Manuel Becker

Manuel Becker is a teaching and research assistant at the institute of political science at the Otto-Friedrich-University of Bamberg. His research interests are international regulation, private authority, regime complexes as well as European governance.