Less Than You Might Think: The Impact of WTO Rules on EU Policies

Abstract

The World Trade Organization (WTO) makes a particularly appropriate case study for analysing how international institutions influence the European Union. The WTO is one of the most highly institutionalized international institutions in the world with wide-ranging and relatively intrusive obligations, which creates expectations that WTO rules should influence EU policy making significantly (see Chapter 1). The impact of WTO obligations on EU policy making, however, has been largely ignored by the literatures on the EU’s trade relations and on its internal policy-making. This chapter analyses whether, why and how EU policies have changed in response to WTO rules and rulings.