Stephen Woolcock

European Union Economic Diplomacy : The Role of the EU in External Economic Relations

Contents: The European Union in economic diplomacy A framework of analysis EU external trade and investment policy-making The European Union in international financial regulation EU external environmental policy EU development policy Conclusions Bibliography Index.

The Singapore issues in Cancún: A failed negotiation ploy or a litmus test for global governance?

The ‘Singapore issues’ in the debate on the agenda of the Doha Development Agenda of the World Trade Organisation are investment, competition, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation. More accurately the issue is what role the WTO should play in each of these policy areas. A number of developed countries, above all the European Union, have argued that these issues should be on the WTO agenda. Developing countries have been either reticent or downright opposed to including these issues. They are referred to as the Singapore issues because it was at the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Singapore in 1996, that agreement was reached to study the issues in WTO. After five years of discussions there was still no consensus on the inclusion of these issues when the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) was launched in November 2001. The decision on whether to include the issues in the DDA, was postponed until the Cancun WTO Ministerial in September 2003. It was also agreed that a decision on ‘the modalities’ of negotiations on these issues would be taken by an ‘explicit consensus’. This meant that any of the 144 WTO members could veto their inclusion. Whilst the WTO normally takes decisions by consensus, this is normally taken to be the case when no WTO member explicitly opposes a decision.

Differentiation within reciprocity: the European Union approach to preferential trade agreements

Recent statements on European Union (EU) trade policy towards developing countries (DCs) have stressed the need for differentiation between trading partners depending on their level of development. But what does this mean in practice? This article assesses the substance of EU trade policy towards a number of partners at different levels of development on the basis of the texts of recent preferential trade agreements (PTAs). It argues that EU PTA policy exhibits differentiation within a general shift towards reciprocity vis-à-vis DCs and that this needs to be assessed at the level of specific policy areas as much as partner country. It also suggests that the factors shaping EU policy vary from case to case with commercial competition and sector interests relatively more important in PTAs with emerging markets and high-income DCs and norms and institutional factors relatively more important in shaping those with least developed or low-income DCs.

EU Policy on Preferential Trade Agreements in the 2000s: A Reorientation Towards Commercial Aims

The aim of this article is to provide a general introduction to EU policy on preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and thus to serve as a background for the more detailed discussion of the constitutional issues involved in EU PTAs. It starts with a description of how EU policy evolved during the 2000s, arguing that EU policy was predominantly driven by external or systemic factors in the international trading system and the EUs commercial response to these, rather than a policy shift driven by predominantly internal factors. This description is followed by a summary of the various motivations behind EU policy. The paper then discusses the content of the EU ‘model’ for PTAs. The term model needs to be used with some caution as the EU approach to PTAs has been fairly flexible and the content varies depending on the EU interests and those of its negotiating partner in any specific negotiation.

Policy Diffusion in Public Procurement: The Role of Free Trade Agreements

Abstract This article assesses the factors shaping policy diffusion of effective, liberal public procurement regimes. Policy diffusion and the analysis of policy diffusion is less developed in public procurement than other policy areas such as investment. This is surprising given the potential economic (public procurement accounts for some 8% of GDP) and signaling (transparency, good governance) gains of adopting regimes that promote competition in public procurement markets. The article first provides an introduction to the issue of public procurement and discusses the nature of procurement regimes, the dependent variable. It then assesses the impact of key variables identified in the literature on policy diffusion, such as competition, coercion and norm emulation. It is argued that issue linkage in bilateral free trade agreements (FTA) appears to have brought about common laws – and in some cases – rules for procurement. But this stops short of a genuine diffusion of liberal procurement regimes due to negotiations being framed by reciprocity rather than efficiency considerations, the costs and complexity of implementation, as well as opposition from vested sector interests and politicians at all levels of government favoring the short term political utility of ‘buy local’ policies.

The European Union’s Policy on Public Procurement in Preferential Trade Agreements

The European Union’s policy on public procurement in the preferential trade agreements (PTAs) has to be seen against the broader EU aims of shaping international trade rules and ensuring market access to key markets. The EU policy on procurement has both shaped and has been shaped by international norms. Initially pressure from the United States (US) led to international discussions in the OECD. These shaped the initial EU Directives aimed at creating a Europe wide procurement market in the early 1970s. But it was not until the late 1980s, as part of the EU Single Market programme, that EU moved to create a competition based, comprehensive regional procurement market. From this point on the EU became a proponent of stronger international rules on procurement. This shift by the EU paved the way for a significant extension of the international rules in the 1996 revision of the World Trade Organisation’s Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). EU policy now has two main components. First, to achieve an equally comprehensive international regime that can ensure access to other major economies, including the emerging markets. Second, to promote the adoption of international best practice in the government procurement, which accounts for a important share of GDP in all economies but it too often subject to a lack of transparency and due process and thus a potential source of abuse and corruption. In these efforts the EU has had partial success in the face of significant opposition. The EU pressed for multilateral negotiations on procurement rules in the WTO’s Doha Development Agenda (DDA), but without success. It had some more success in the plurilateral negotiations to extend the coverage of the (non-MFN) GPA, but this was very largely in the form of greater commitments by existing developed signatories to that agreement. Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have offered an alternative means of fulfilling the EU’s objectives and in these the EU has had some success, but there remains considerable opposition. Public procurement arguably marks the high tide mark for the extension of the liberal paradigm of an open, rules-based order into national policy autonomy. It remains to be seen whether recent developments in leading OECD economies, such as the call for more Buy America policies by the incoming Trump Administration will threaten the scope of the existing rules.

EU economic diplomacy: the factors shaping common action

The current special issue of The Hague Journal of Diplomacy is concerned with economic diplomacy. This article looks at the role that the European Union plays in economic diplomacy and shows that the EU’s role is essentially to facilitate, rather than to promote national companies as EU member state governments do. After discussing the various definitions of economic diplomacy, the article summarizes the areas in which the European Union constrains the scope for certain national policies of the EU member states. The article then discusses the factors that shape EU economic diplomacy and assesses the relative importance of these factors in specific negotiations.