Governmentality in EU external trade and environment policy: between rights and market

Abstract

While the European Union's external trade policy has always engaged with such values as development, human rights and environmental sustainability, this rhetoric has been significantly stepped up over the last years. The unprecedented politicization of major trade deals and accusations that the EU ignores normative concerns in practice have led the European Commission to declare in 2015 that ‘trade policy … will not only project our interests, but also our values’. A growing number of scholarly contributions address the EU's response to contestation over trade policy and its attempts to increase legitimacy. Governmentality in EU external trade and environment policy contributes to this debate from a critical perspective. Although it is grounded in transnational legal studies, Jessica Lawrence's work reaches beyond the mainstream of her discipline, providing an insightful analysis of the EU's external policy based on Michel Foucault's idea of governmentality. It is this interdisciplinary approach that gives the book its richness.