GSTÖHL Sieglinde - EU Trade Policy and Emerging Economic Statecraft (20h)
This compulsory course examines the European Union’s (EU) trade policy in the current era of geoeconomics, where economic statecraft is gaining importance. Economic statecraft is today largely understood as the use of economic instruments to produce beneficial geopolitical results − an option that is mainly open to major powers given their centrality in the global economy and access to resources. The EU is a major trade power, alongside the United States and China, and its trade policy has over time become more closely intertwined with other policies ranging from development, human rights and environment to security. The course aims at understanding the EU’s external economic relations by analysing the multilevel nature of its policy-making and international bargaining processes. First, the functioning of the Common Commercial Policy, its goals, actors and decision-making processes are examined. The second session introduces the analytical approach of two-level games which will be used in the paper assignment to analyse a case study. Third, the multilateral trade regime of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), in which the EU’s trade policy is embedded, as well as the challenges that the WTO is at present facing are addressed. In a fourth step, the EU’s changing trade strategy across the multilateral, bilateral and unilateral levels is discussed. Fifth, the course deals with issues at the intersection of trade and development such as the EU’s evolving relations with the group of African, Caribbean and Pacific countries and the Generalised System of Preferences. The sixth session is dedicated to the nexus between trade and human rights as well as sustainability. Finally, the growing nexus between trade and (economic) security and the EU’s emerging new economic foreign policy are explored.
Professor: Sieglinde GSTÖHL