Too Complex or Too Ambitious?

This ePaper looks at the recent politics of EU trade, and specifically at the
political hurdles characterising the enforcement of free trade agreements
(FTAs) negotiated by the European Commission. It argues that civil society
advocacy groups have played a key, yet undertheorised, role in accounting for
the recent politicisation of a number of EU FTAs, which has often translated
into obstacles to ratification. The TTIP, the CETA, and the EU-Mercosur FTA
constitute relevant examples. The analysis privileges a Commission standpoint,
conceiving ratification hurdles as public-management issues tackled by
Brussels in view of rescuing its trade-policy mandate from domestic vetoes. We
argue that the Commission is particularly compelled to implement FTA reviews
and safeguards when advocacy concerns are endorsed by official-level policy
actors like the European Parliament, enjoying ultimate veto powers. In a final
step, the research also enquires into the narrower reality of mixed FTAs,
focusing on the case study of the CETA. In this regard, it suggests that
prolonged national-level ratification poses no extraordinary obstacle to the
Commission, as treaty enforcement is aided by lock-in dynamics involving both
official-level and civil-society veto players – even in the absence of full de
jure ratification. We conclude that, while the above ratification obstacles
have been addressed by the Commission on an ad hoc basis, as contingent policy
issues, their prolonged occurrence suggests that they will need to be tackled
more systematically in the future. This will require operating at the level of
treaty-design, by addressing pressing concerns like trade and sustainable
development more thoroughly and bindingly ahead of concluding negotiations –
in view of preventing otherwise inescapable enforcement hurdles.