Transatlantic Trade And Investment Partnership Negotiations Research Articles

The Politicization of European Union Trade Policy: Radical-Left Euroskeptic Opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

This study aims to analyze the correlation between radical-left Euroskeptic (RLE) activity and European Union (EU) trade policy by focusing on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). At the beginning of TTIP negotiations, the agreement was not high on political agendas and was not a major concern within European society. Thus, its salience was low. This initial lack of interest stemmed from the fact that the TTIP, as an economic and technical issue, did not draw public attention. This study shows that RLEs profoundly affected public opinion on the TTIP by increasing its salience during the European parliamentary elections in 2014 in France and Germany. Second, RLEs involved social actors and non-governmental organizations in anti-TTIP campaigns and channeled European anxieties into the STOP TTIP European Citizens’ Initiative. Third, RLEs used this proposed agreement between the EU and the United States to increase polarization within European society and ideological cleavages within the European Parliament. Finally, we can assume that an anti-TTIP campaign promoted by radical-right Euroskeptics would have had different drivers. Thus, my findings have implications for understanding the correlation between RLE activity and the politicization of EU trade policy, and they suggest some avenues for future research.

The Selective Politicization of Transatlantic Trade Negotiations

European Union (EU) trade policy is in the spotlight. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations triggered substantial public mobilization which emerged in a surge of literature on trade politicization. Notwithstanding politicization’s topicality and significance, it varies considerably over time, across trade agreements negotiations as well as across EU member states. By picking up on the latter, this article examines why, despite similar economic benefits potentially to be gained from trade liberalization, TTIP negotiations revealed striking differences in politicization in Germany and the UK. Understanding this variation is illustrated by highlighting the impact of some of TTIPs’ substantial issues mobilizing a range of materially and ideationally motivated stakeholders, who in turn shaped diverging governments’ trade positions of the countries under scrutiny. In explaining this selective politicization across two European countries, focus is on three explanatory variables, domestic material interests (business associations and trade unions), societal ideas (voters and non-governmental organizations [NGOs]) dominant in these countries’ domestic politics, as well as their interaction with national institutions. For this reason, the societal approach to governmental preference formation is employed which provides a detailed exploration of these three domestic factors, as well as the importance of their interdependence, in shaping the TTIP positions of the UK and German governments.

From back rooms to the street? A research agenda for explaining variation in the public salience of trade policy-making in Europe

ABSTRACTAfter the negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) triggered massive public mobilization in the European Union (EU), literature emerged on the novel ‘politicization’ of trade in Europe. To be sure, public salience was high around the TTIP negotiations. However, public salience over EU trade and investment negotiations has varied considerably over the past two decades. The objective of this paper is to stimulate a research agenda explaining such variation. After presenting evidence of variation (over time, across contemporaneous negotiations, and across Member States), we review a diverse set of literature to lay out six complementary explanations for why some trade deals provoke public salience, while others do not: changing nature of trade and investment negotiations; growing discontent with globalization; transformation of the media landscape; institutional changes brought about by the 2009 Lisbon Treaty; the role of the United States; and foreign interference.

TTIP Negotiations and Public Procurement: Internal Federalist Tensions and External Risks of Marginalisation

Abstract Government procurement is perhaps one of the most underexplored areas in the recent academic literature on transatlantic economic relations, yet it was also one of the most protected economic sectors addressed in the now derailed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. Even though the European Union (EU) and the United States have undertaken extensive reciprocal procurement commitments under the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), as well as in their respective preferential trade agreements (PTAs), the liberalisation and harmonisation of the transatlantic procurement market could not be more ambiguous or controversial. This article aims to deepen our understanding of crucial aspects of the contemporary EU–United States procurement relationship. To this end, the article explores the TTIP negotiations as well as similar PTAs and underlines the potential implications in terms of the fragmentation of the international discipline of procurement regulation.

Negotiating 21st Century Rules on Energy: What Is at Stake for the European Union, the United States and the BRICS?

Abstract In the context of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the European Union (EU) has taken the lead in promoting the inclusion of a specific chapter on energy trade and investment in order to enhance energy security and promote renewable energy. Irrespective of the success of the TTIP negotiations, the EU proposal can contribute to developing multilateral rules on energy trade and investment. This is especially important given the increased number of energy disputes filed by the EU and the United States against other leading energy market players, including the BRICS. This article provides a normative analysis of the new rules proposed by the EU and reflects on potential responses of BRICS energy regulators. It argues that, while these rules are unlikely to immediately affect BRICS energy practices, they may eventually be ‘imported’ in BRICS domestic jurisdictions in order to promote renewable energy and attract investment in energy infrastructure.

Towards the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union and United States

In this research work, the author focuses on the analysis of the activity towards the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union and United States. It has been emphasized that the talks will reduce regulatory barriers. New agreements to remove trade barriers aim at reducing dead-weight costs and at increasing net social gains from international trade. The article examines the impact of free trade agreements like TTIP and, in particular, investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms in reducing the power of national governments to regulate and eliminate market inequality. The article offers examples of successful regulatory cooperation efforts in the hope that it will shed light on possible approaches to addressing regulatory divergences. Ideally, the best way to address problems arising from regulatory divergence would be on a multilateral basis, while taking into account the relations of the EU and the US with other countries. The main aim of the article is the presentation of the challenges for TTIP negotiations. The particular objective of the research task is the regulatory trade barriers in US-EU foreign trade policy, the nature and the promoters of TTIP, the interrelationship between regulatory standards and international cooperation in TTIP. The general theoretical approach will be of broad interest to economists interested in international questions, especially transatlantic cooperation, as well as to political scientists. The main methods applied in this research were the institutional method, comparative method, documentation method and statistical methods. Additionally, the methods of deductive and inductive forecasting were applied.

TTIP, business as usual?

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment partnership (TTIP) can be considered a game changer among trade agreements. TTIP not only aims to shape tomorrow’s trade policy, but has also had a huge influence on the democratic legitimacy of the EU. Based on recent literature on democratic legitimacy in the EU, this paper studies how the TTIP negotiations score in terms of input and throughput legitimacy. Our results show that these negotiations have had their fair share of problems, such as the disproportionally large influence of corporations and a lack of transparency and accountability. However, these legitimacy problems occurred mainly in the first months of the negotiation process. Due to large scale protests and critiques from civil society, measures were taken to boost the legitimacy of the process.

TTIP negotiations: interest groups, anti-TTIP civil society campaigns and public opinion

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) was intended to create jobs and boost the economies on both sides of the Atlantic. However, constituency support was difficult to garnish, and negotiations were frozen in late 2016, leaving their conclusion in doubt. What led to this stage? Why has an agreement been elusive? Using an array of indicators this paper argues that a major reason was the extensive and professionally structured public mobilisation campaign conducted by European civil society organisations. This shifted public opinion across Europe, which in turn impacted policy. Our research contributes to the literatures on trade, lobbying, and transatlantic relations, with relevance beyond TTIP. The paper discusses how generalised and diffused interests and public opinion are impacting an area of public policy (trade) traditionally influenced predominantly by lobbying from narrowly focused interests.

Stopped TTIP? Its potential impact on the world and the role of neglected FDI

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has been one of the most heavily debated issues in international economics over the last few years. We analyze its potential impact on the world, including both insiders and outsiders of the agreement, using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model with Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) under imperfect competition. In our simulation, TTIP consists of reductions of tariffs, non-tariff barriers and barriers to FDI. Our results show that the FDI component, which has often been neglected in previous studies, would contribute to nearly half of the overall impact of TTIP for the US and nearly one third for the EU. Insiders would heavily benefit from TTIP, whereas, it would be slightly negative for outsiders (Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia and Other Advanced Countries), except for the big Asian economies (China, Japan and India), which would remain unaffected. The slightly negative effects would turn into positive with an “inclusive TTIP” (i.e., one avoiding third country discriminating rules and standards). An inclusive TTIP would benefit both insiders, who would gain more than with the standard TTIP, and outsiders, who would be better off than without the TTIP. Welfare, GDP, wages, as well as aggregate imports and exports of the world economy would clearly increase following either a modest or ambitious TTIP agreement. Our results suggest that policy makers should resume TTIP negotiations and try to strike an inclusive and ambitious deal.

The puzzle of public opposition to TTIP in Germany

AbstractGermany is pivotal to the success of any trade agreement between the European Union and the United States. As the third largest exporter in the world, Germany is dependent on open markets; throughout the post-war period, government support for free trade has been unequivocal. Despite these positive incentives for expanding free trade, both German business and the wider public voiced fierce opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). TTIP became a flash point for the German public to overcome collective action problems and create a broad protest movement against a free trade agreement for the first time in German history. This movement enabled the public to successfully exercise influence on German foreign economic policy-making, which had long been protected from public pressure. By 2015, the success of that pressure in penetrating the policy-making apparatus combined with growing government concern about the potential of international firms to undermine national policy. As a result of the confluence of these two forces, German leaders changed their position in TTIP negotiations.

TTIP: contentious market regulation

Based on the extensive literature in the area of historical institutionalism and regulation, this article embarks on the discussion about the concept of contentious market regulation and argues that the negotiations for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are emblematic of a new generation of trade liberalization. Since the negotiations started, however, the TTIP has faced the main challenge has been how to bridge the gap between the initial consensus for boosting transatlantic economic growth through trade and the increasing contestation conveyed by several actors during the negotiation process. The article finds four main factors defining the interaction between the array of players involved in the TTIP negotiation process. First, the resilience of negotiators and regulators to efficiently advance the transatlantic agenda by adapting to new demands (investment court), finding alternatives to internal resistances (federal means of liberalizing public procurement), and continuing working on technical regulations for improving market competition in the transatlantic area (automotive sector). Second, the disagreements and polarizations within the legislative bodies as well as the public opinion and social movements on both side of the Atlantic, undermining the legitimacy of the negotiation process. Third, the increasing hesitation from decision-makers to continue the TTIP negotiations, potentially eroding the effectiveness of negotiators to reached an agreement. Fourth, the more interconnected trend among preferential trade talks.

From Access to Documents to Consumption of Information: The European Commission Transparency Policy for the TTIP Negotiations

To increase transparency of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations, the European Commission has reformed existing information sharing systems for trade policy. The Commission has moved from a strategy of providing transparency in the form of access to documents to one of access to information, geared specifically towards enhancing consumption of the available information. In both public and institutional transparency policy, the width of the target audience and the depth of the information have increased, and the manner of provision has shifted from reactive to proactive provision of information. As a result, the TTIP is now being coined as the most transparent trade negotiation ever in the EU’s history and a pilot project for transparency policy in future trade negotiations. The article adopts a supply-centred perspective to explain a transparency policy that goes beyond the legal minimum imposed by formal requirements. It relies on interview data of the changes brought about in inter-institutional relations since 2014, basic quantitative and qualitative analysis of document material, and a five-month participatory observation by the author in the secretariat of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade.

TTIP negotiations, policy convergence, and the transatlantic digital economy

AbstractThe Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has the potential to be a landmark treaty on many grounds. According to European and American officials, one of the main features that should differentiate the TTIP from other bilateral free trade agreements is, beyond its unprecedented scale, the ambition of its regulatory dimension. On both sides of the Atlantic there is a strong incentive to mitigate the impacts of “behind-the-border” obstacles that mostly stem from existing divergences between laws and regulations applied in Europe and in the United States. To do this, trade negotiators, together with policymakers and regulators, attempt, when possible and desirable, to facilitate the convergence of the policies that frame the European and the American markets. This paper analyzes how convergence may be reached with regards to the regulation of the digital economy, a relatively new area of interest in the field of trade law and policy studies, that seems to deserve a specific attention considering the growing importance it has taken at the domestic level and in the context of trade negotiations.

Parliamentary assertion and deep integration: the European parliament in the CETA and TTIP negotiations

Scholars have long viewed parliamentarians as parochial actors having little interest, or incentive to engage, in international diplomacy. Yet, parliaments have recently taken on a very active role in various international negotiations. This article explores the role of the European Parliament (EP) in the European Union (EU)–Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the EU–United States Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. Drawing on classic institutionalist insights, it develops the concept of parliamentary assertion and explores its usefulness through a combination of comparative and process-tracing analyses. The conclusions are threefold: (1) the EP has asserted its power in international trade matters beyond the simple power of consent; (2) the EP’s search for legitimacy in the EU polity is driving this phenomenon; and (3) this phenomenon is significant beyond the current CETA and TTIP negotiations.

Diverging German and British governmental trade policy preferences in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations

ABSTRACT In EU trade policy literature it is common knowledge that EU member states can initiate, postpone and even block trade negotiations. Their importance therefore is of great significance but knowledge on member governments’ trade policy preferences is very limited. Main aim of this article is to close this research gap by calling for a stronger focus on the domestic politics towards EU trade policy-making by examining member governments’ trade policy preferences. Numerous trade negotiations have illustrated that these preferences can considerably diverge in cross-country comparison. The most recent example are the EU-U.S. trade negotiations. Why did governmental trade policy preferences towards the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) differ? Novel here is the application of the societal approach to governmental preference formation which primarily focuses on domestic-level variables, sectoral interests and value-based ideas, in shaping governmental trade positions. The relationship between these independent variables is examined in order to illustrate which of these was more dominant and under which conditions, in shaping British and German governmental trade policy preferences during TTIP negotiations.

TTIP Negotiations and Public Procurement: A Federalist Approach

Government procurement is perhaps one of the most under-explored areas in the recent academic literature on transatlantic economic relations and yet it is also one of the most protected economic sectors addressed in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. Even though the EU and the US have undertaken extensive reciprocal procurement commitments under the WTO’s Agreement on Government Procurement, as well as in their respective preferential trade agreements (PTAs), the liberalisation and harmonisation of the transatlantic procurement market could not be more ambiguous or controversial. This paper aims to deepen our understanding of crucial aspects of the current EU–US procurement relationship. To this end, the paper explores the TTIP negotiations as well as similar PTAs and underlines the potential implications in terms of the fragmentation of the international discipline of procurement regulation.

Wspólna Polityka Handlowa Unii Europejskiej i jej znaczenie dla handlu światowego. Studium przypadku Transatlantyckiego Partnerstwa w dziedzinie Handlu i Inwestycji

The main aim of the paper involves evaluation of significance of the Common Commercial Policy (CCP) for the EU and understanding of its role in the global perspective. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) bargaining is analysed through the prism of the CCP’s formation history, objectives, achievements and unresolved issues. An important result of the research is the conclusion that European’s/EU’s attempts to provide depoliticized common trade policy collide with its objectives of values’ exporting. Commitment to preferential treatment of developing and least developed countries creates a field of instability and endangerment of a double standards. Current EU-U.S. Free Trade Agreement talks remain a particular case that reveal gaps, but also achievements of the CCP and its role in the global trade. TTIP negotiations are a milestone in a process of the global trade standards elaboration. If exhausting bureaucratic bargaining looks uncomfortable for the U.S. ’realpolitik, it perfectly suits to the CCP which was creating the same way.

TTIP and legislative‒executive relations in EU trade policy

This paper analyses Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations in order to assess how the move towards tighter economic integration within the EU‒US strategic partnership impacts on legislative‒executive relations in EU trade policy. The analysis examines the institutional, substantive and party political dimensions of national parliaments’ scrutiny of the Common Commercial Policy. Based on insights into both domestic and EU channels of parliamentary monitoring of TTIP negotiations, the paper argues that, although the government remains the central object of democratic control, the involvement of national parliaments in transatlantic trade extends to encompass the EU’s own transatlantic and trade policies. This is rooted in the legislatures’ legal capacity to constrain the executive in the negotiation, conclusion and, where applicable, ratification phases of EU trade agreements. It is argued that national parliamentary influence takes the shape of politicisation of the legitimacy of the expected policy outcomes of these agreements.

On the Benefits of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Negotiations for the EU Legal Order: A Legal Perspective

This article argues that Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations have a positive legal story worth recounting as to the effects of the negotiations upon the European Union (EU) legal order. The article explores the negotiation of EU international agreements as a specific field of law and considers how the TTIP negotiations overall contribute to the politicization of the EU through shifts in legal practice on the part of all major institutional actors to EU international relations in changes to approach, procedure and actions. It uses the metric of responsiveness to measure or chart the former, considering the responses as actually practiced by institutional actors in law to normative concerns arising. It considers these practices across a range of actors, specifically the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Ombudsman, the Committee of the Regions and the TTIP Advisory Group.

Genealogies of cost–benefit analysis in transatlantic regulatory cooperation

Cost–benefit analysis (CBA) has become a quintessential tool in administrative law informing a variety of modes of regulatory governance. It provides a justification for the regulation of markets based on a quasi-scientific and seemly neutral logic to assess the impact of secondary legislation by government agencies. A new frontier for CBA is the promotion of trade liberalization. It features prominently in the regulatory chapter of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). During the TTIP negotiations, scholars deployed CBA as a “neutral” tool to achieve greater convergence or reassert divergence and experimentalism in regulatory governance across the Atlantic. A genealogical examination reveals the existence of at least two strains of cost–benefit analyses in Western legal thought. The first one goes back to social orientations in private law translating into social–scientific expertise for regulators and proportionality for judges. The second one goes back to neoclassical economics in private law translating into economic–scientific expertise for regulators and balancing for judges. Today, scholars in their convergentist, divergentist, or experimentalist approaches to governance deploy CBA and regulatory science as a neutral and quasi-scientific method to legitimize the subjection of national regulation to more demanding standards. Instead, the genealogical approach reveals that CBA is a contingent and open-ended regulatory tool that justifies Contentious political decisions about regulatory strategies while allowing lawyers who apply CBA to remain agnostic on its distributive impact.