The European Union and the political economy of enforcing international trade rules

Emile van Ommeren, Arlo Poletti and Dirk De Bièvre
Additional contact information
Emile van Ommeren: Department of Political Science, 26660University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Arlo Poletti: Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

European Union Politics, 2021, vol. 22, issue 3, 377-400

Abstract: The European Commission keeps track of foreign trade barriers through its Market Access Strategy. In this study, we examine some of the key political-economic conditions under which the European Union decides whether and how to address these trade issues. Drawing on an original dataset of (allegedly) illegal foreign trade barriers faced by European Union businesses, we show that industries dominated by a few large companies are more successful in gaining the support of the Commission to challenge these foreign trade barriers. Moreover, we find that the European Commission’s strategy depends on the economic power relationship with the trading partner: the European Union privileges negotiations when seeking to enforce international trade rules against economically weaker states, while it prefers to use litigation against stronger trading partners.

Keywords: Dispute settlement; enforcement; European trade policy; lobbying; World Trade Organization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14651165211001514 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:22:y:2021:i:3:p:377-400

DOI: 10.1177/14651165211001514

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in European Union Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().