Laurie Buonanno

The new trade deals and the mobilisation of civil society organizations: comparing EU and US responses

Abstract This paper examines mobilisation of civil society organizations (CSOs), focusing primarily on the highly-contested politics engendered by the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), by posing the question, ‘how can we account for strong opposition to TTIP in the EU, while being nearly non-existent in the US?’ It is argued that European CSO opposition to TTIP and mobilisation of European public opinion against TTIP can be traced to the European Commission’s employment of myths – specifically a green, social, and humanitarian Europe in a process of ‘othering’ to build a sense of European national identity. Salient issues in transatlantic trade and regulatory capacity both factor into CSO opposition, themselves also a function of myth making, but also a product of the EU’s governance system. It will be difficult for the EU to accommodate and appease such oppositional groups because of perceptions among many Europeans that Americans tolerate lower regulatory protections.

Financial services regulation and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement

Together, the EU and the USA dominate the global financial services industry. This dominance, coupled with the inherent risk of regulatory arbitrage, suggest that the financial services sector is an area ripe for transatlantic economic and regulatory cooperation. While historically transatlantic dialogue centred on market liberalisation, after the 2008 global financial meltdown the focus shifted to regulatory reform. The EU sees the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership as an opportunity to establish a transatlantic financial services regulatory council, while the USA opposes a shift from the current informal Financial Markets Regulatory Dialogue (FMRD). An analysis of post-2010 regulatory reforms finds that regulatory convergence has taken place without a tightly integrated transatlantic regulatory body. The study concludes that differences in political ideology, institutional structures, and regulatory capacity largely explain disagreement between the EU and the USA as to the most effective form transatlantic regulatory cooperation should take in the financial services sector.

Organising, Managing, and Assessing an Intercampus, Transnational EU Simulation

The Transatlantic Consortium for European Union Studies and Simulations (T ACEUSS) is a consortium of colleges and universities in Europe and the United States.! Since 1988, TACEUSS has provided an organisational structure for faculty and students from member institutions to advance their understanding of the European Union through simulations, scholarly meetings, and publications. To accomplish its mission, T ACEUSS organises a number of events including an annual simulation of the European Union (EuroSim) held alternately in the United States and Europe (Table 1 contains locations and data on U.S. and European student participation). The overall purpose of EuroSim is to provide a framework for a partial simulation of the decision-making process of the European Union. The advance preparations and the simulation strive to give participants a better understanding of the EU; of international and supranational organisations in general; of the EU member and applicant states, their peoples, politics, and policies; and of major current issues in international relations. The simulation provides the participants with opportunities to develop their skills and techniques at negotiation and conflict resolution, public speaking, debate, expository writing, logic and reasoning, small-group dynamics, leadership, and problem-solving. This article shows how the simulation programme is developed; the role of academic staff in the simulation; how the simulation fits into assessment; and how the whole project is fmanced and managed. EuroSim rests on four main principles: • it seeks to reflect the realities of the EU decision-making process as accurately as possible • it strives to schedule a practical programme that can be executed within the existing constraints of time and facilities