ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the European Parliament (EP) as an international actor in EU trade policy in the post-Lisbon period. It looks at both the institutional involvement of the EP in trade policy making and the substantive position of the EP on trade policy issues.
The first section elaborates on the formal and informal power of the EP in trade issues. It argues that the Lisbon Treaty has formalized the increased involvement of the EP over time, while also granting it new competences to give consent to agreements and to adopt domestic trade legislation. This gradually increasing parliamentarian involvement may be explained not only by the EU’s quest for legitimacy in an area that has become heavily contested and politicized, but also by the interests of the Commission (using the ‘tying-hands’ strategy in international negotiations) and the Council (using the EP as an ‘institutional check’ against the Commission).
The second section analyses how the EP’s upgraded involvement in trade has played out in practice since 2009 by focusing on a number of recent cases: the agreement with South Korea, the EP’s rejection of the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the intense debates around the trade agreement with Colombia and Peru, the unilateral trade preferences under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) scheme, the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations with African countries, and the negotiations with the US and Japan. The chapter concludes that, contrary to what some had expected, MEPs are increasingly showing their teeth in trade issues. The rejection of the multilateral ACTA is a historic precedent in this regard. Regarding substance, however, the EP has at times taken a less normative and more pragmatic stance, for example, in its approach to human rights issues and in relation to free trade.
