ABSTRACT
The European Union's (EU's) position on world trade has recently undergone a rapid rise in levels of politicization. As trade policy has become a composite policy, and politically more controversial, attention on the way in which trade policy decisions are taken in the EU has also increased. The EU's problem with agriculture is not its ability to defend its defensive interests. As S. Meunier has observed, internal divisions inside the EU reinforce its ability to resist any pressure from its World Trade Organization (WTO) counterparts to change its policies, in this case its agricultural policies. The case of agriculture and the way in which it poses a problem for the EU indicates to what extent the EU is confronted with a paradox—a paradox of strength—in the WTO. The EU's trade policy belongs to the oldest and most integrated policy areas in which the EU is active.
