The Case of the European Union Partnership and Cooperation Agreement Negotiations with Thailand

Abstract

This article examines the European Union’s (EU) current negotiations of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with Thailand. It asks why the EU has entered into the negotiation process with this remote developing economy and provides theoretical explanations for the EU’s motivations. It will give an overview of the process and discuss the issues that have emerged in the course of the negotiations and are currently pending. The article will assess the pre-negotiation phase and the obstacles during the negotiation phase that have delayed the conclusion of the process. The findings will allude to historical institutionalism and a self-devised content-context approach synthesised with William I. Zartman’s insights on negotiation theory. The article argues that despite the importance of the economic dimension of the negotiations and the general prevalence of international political economy in explaining the EU’s relations with Asia, this case reveals a complexity of variables that contest a purely economic lens and allow a theoretically eclectic and reflectivist understanding of the impediments, stimuli and of the process itself.