In recent years, the negotiations of EU trade agreements such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the USA and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada have provoked unprecedented levels of public contestation. Conversely, many other EU trade negotiations took place in the quasi-indifference of the European citizens and media. What explains this variation? In this study, I advance some possible explanations concerning the structural causes for the politicization of EU trade policy over the past 30 years and test them against a newly collected dataset covering 19 preferential trade agreements. The comparative analysis suggests that the politicization of trade negotiations is not generated by a unique cause or individual factor but is given by the co-occurrence of specific combinations of conditions. Specifically, the results show that (1) the reform of the EU trade policy-making introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon and the negotiating partners’ level of bargaining power are both main drivers of politicization, and that (2) the degree of public support toward the EU is especially relevant when it comes to ‘deep and comprehensive’ agreements touching on sensitive domestic issues.

Paper by Lore Hayek, Thorsten Simon, Reto Stauffer, Philipp Umek.

The Council of the EU has been at the center of EU decision-making since the earliest days of the European Economic Community. However, the nature of its central role has changed dramatically as the EU has evolved. In particular its core function within the EU’s institutional structure has shifted from a nearly autocratic executive tasked with both agenda-setting and decision making to one chamber in a largely symmetrical bicameral legislature with shared decision making and only limited agenda setting capacity. This evolution is less well understood than the development of other key EU institutions in part because the transformation of the Council has been both gradual and informal. In addition, the changing character of the Council has occurred largely as a consequence of formal reforms to other core institutions, the European Parliament (EP) and European Council (EUCO). This research examines this transformation through a historical institutionalist lens, identifying critical historical events (the creation of EUCO and shift to direct elections for the EP) and using a detailed analysis of the texts of the treaties themselves and supplemental materials (archival documents, older academic articles and books, etc.) to understand the extent to which the dramatic transformation of Council was intentional or an unintended consequence of institutional reforms aimed at resolving other concerns. This will provide a more comprehensive understanding of both the development of the EU and the character of its political system today.

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