GSTÖHL S. - The EU in a Global Political Economy Context (20h)

This compulsory course examines the role of the European Union in the global political economy. The EU is the world’s largest trading entity and donor of official development aid, and its trade and development policies are to a large extent interrelated. 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 Organization (WTO), in which the EU’s trade policy is embedded, is addressed. In a fourth step, the EU’s trade strategy and its growing network of preferential trade agreements are discussed. Fifth, the course deals with issues at the intersection of trade and development such as the EU’s Generalized System of Preferences. The sixth session is dedicated to European development cooperation, in particular the EU’s changing relations with the group of African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. Finally, the question of policy coherence and how the EU is managing the nexus of trade and development policy with other policies and for the export of norms to (such as human rights) is explored.

Professor: Sieglinde GSTÖHL

ECTS Card 2021-2022

Academic year
2021 - 2022
Semester
First semester
Course type
Compulsory courses
ECTS Points
3.50