The European Union: Balancing trade liberalization and protectionism

Since its formation, the European Economic Community (EEC), later to become the European Union (EU), has developed into a major trading partner accounting for almost a fifth of all the world’s imports and exports. However, despite its market size, which has grown over time as a result of the enlargements, it was not until late in the GATT era that the EU became a more proactive player. In the mid 1990s, the EU emerged as a proactive player in the newly established World Trade Organization (WTO), taking the lead in launching a comprehensive round in 2001, the Doha Development Agenda Round (Woolcock 2005b: 391; van den Hoven 2004). As suggested in the introductory chapter of this book, institutions, ideas, interests and actors and how they interrelate are important analytical dimensions in the study of trade policy. This chapter demonstrates that the EU’s trade policy is the outcome of complex policy and negotiation processes in which these factors have privileged certain courses of action and constrained others.