ABSTRACT
As is well known, the European Union (EU) forms an important trading bloc – with potentially an impressive amount of market power – in the world trading system and a fortiori in the World Trade Organization.1 Its ability to transform this potential market power into effective power depends on its ability to cope with its internal diversity. In itself, this is not a remarkable observation, as every member of the WTO has to cope with internal diversity one way or the other. In the EU, however, this internal diversity translates itself into internal institutional fragmentation and this in both a horizontal and a vertical way.
