European Union Essay Research Paper The Delegation

European Union Essay, Research Paper

The Delegation of Trade Authority in the EU

Even though, for the past several decades, member states of the European Union (EU) have been derelict with their power to act as independent players in international trade negotiations, they have recently begun to recapture some of their lost trade sovereignty. (Kennett 1996) Neither the European Court of Justice 1994.s opinion, nor the 1997 formal reform of trade policy process at Amsterdam delegated full negotiating power to the Commission over the so-called, new trade issues of services and intellectual property. Instead the member states accepted a hybrid form of decision-making to enable impromptu, rather than a structural, per se, delegation of jurisdiction. As such, this shows a shift in the perceived trade-off between economic interests and ideological prejudice on the part of key member states.

The question now arises as to who speaks for Europe. History has shown that there has been a sharp difference between political and economic realms in regard to Europe. In terms of international politics, member states speak for themselves. Yet, in contrast to the international political scene, international trade in the European Community was granted exclusive competence. (Weiler 1991) Whether it is through bilateral, regional or multilateral trade negotiations, Europe communally speaks with one voice and more importantly negotiates through one agent, that being the European Commission.

It seems as though the .single voice. regarding trade policy is more crucial now, more than ever, for Europe. The end of the cold war accelerated the shift of the focal point of competition from security to economics. Economic competition on a global scale is not based on market dynamics, but on the capacity of the states to utilize their own markets as effective negotiating pieces in global trade wars. Meanwhile, trade matters are becoming more political with the blurring of foreign policy and commercial tools in the manner of diplomacy. The new trade agenda touches upon the areas that are part of the domestic social fabric and they then therefore are most sensitive to external interference.

As the longest and deepest integrated policy in the EU, external trade composes a critical test for the impending debate over the apportioning of power between the center and the states. The idea of .common voice., .common interest. and .common destiny. are in and of themselves linked. Therefore, whether a policy entity can project congruity of purpose externally is a key test of the degree of integration between its constituting elements. (Denza 1996) Above all, the debate over trade authority has been a reflection and a test of a larger ideological battle over European integration. The member states. position over this issue has been a function of both their distinct trade interests and their ideological propensities regarding sovereignty transfers. The weight between these two motivations has shifted in the past decade, for both structural and conjunctural reasons. This has reflected itself in a shift between economic and sovereignty concerns over the years.

Since the signing of the Treaty of Rome, European integration has consistently been that of progressive expansionism of over an even broader range of policy areas, from research and development to the environment to the Single European Act in 1986 to the Maastricht Treaty in 1991. Nonetheless, most of these areas have not been fully transferred to the level of the EC. Conversely, a few policies have been under Community amenability from the beginning.

When it came to trade, the Treaty of Rome was a revolutionary document. It not only contained broad injunctions for achieving free trade internally, but it also granted the new supranational entity an external personality with the authority to elaborate, negotiate and enforce all aspects of trade relations with the rest of the world. (Devuyst 1995) In practice though this was done through the establishment of a common commercial policy based upon three principles. A common external tarrif, common trade agreements with third countries and the uniform application of trade instruments across member states, made up these three principles. Due to two central rationales the founding member states began to delegate trade on a collective level. Firstly, the history of trade policy in advanced industrial democracies, like the United States, showed that such delegation helped insulate the policy-making process from domestic pressures, which in turn promoted a more liberal international trade order. The second rationale was, a single voice in trade policy was expected to facilitate the conclusion of trade agreements with third countries and increase external influence.

Until the Amsterdam Summit the Treaty of Rome.s original wording, which granted the Community exclusive competence in trade policy, remained unchanged. (Devuyst 1992) The provisions determining the trade policy-making process delegated authority from the individual states and their parliaments to the assembly of European states, acting collectively through the Council of Ministers. This approach can be understood in classical principal-agent terms, where the member states, as principals, have delegated their authority to conclude trade agreements to the European Community, acting as the agent. (Pollack 1995