ABSTRACT
As a trade power, the European Union (EU) sees itself, as it were, as a “gardener” of globalization. In part due to multilateral inertia and contentious politics against unfettered trade, the EU has unflinchingly charted an external trade agenda that goes beyond traditional tariff liberalization and market access. Yet mainstream scholarly discourse has tended to position the preferential trade regime for what the EU considers to be “the most in need” apropos of low politics, that is, “at the other end of the spectrum (unconditional opening as a tool for development), trusting that new export opportunities in themselves will foster desired changes in the beneficiaries”. There is nothing new in asserting the politicization of the EU's common commercial policy. Yet academic attention to this issue has heightened recently given the ever-expanding scope of EU “new generation” trade regimes and the institutional innovations in EU trade policymaking.
