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External Trade Policy Of The European Union Economics Essay This paper focuses on the internal and external stimuli rotating the European Union (EU) external trade policy in the free trade direction. The main argument of the work is that the EU’s active positive role in multilateral trading system functioning under the World Trade Organization has been driven by two factors: first, internal institutional design of the trade policy-making: rationally chosen historical institutional design that leads to ‘’lock-ins’’ in free trade path, and second, rationales of comparative advantage in factors of production and the Union’s target of becoming global superpower. The main theories used are European integration theories rational-choice and historical institutionalism, and trade theory comparative advantage accompanied with the Hecksher-Ohlin model. Therefore, the paper is divided into three parts. Part I ‘’Theoretical Framework’’ explains the usage of the indicated theories in the discussion; Part II ‘’Internal Catalysts of EU External Trade Policy’’ (ETP) firstly gives an overall picture of the EU ETP, and then shifts to describe trade policy making: how or whether the free trade or protectionist interests of Member States, EU institutions and private actors’ are balanced, and the role of institutional contexts in this regard; Part III ‘’EU’s Active Engagement in Global Trade Liberalization: Rationales’’ aims at answering the question of lying in the subject of this section: why this active stance ? To this end, I firstly give a picture of the EU international trade with certain indicators, secondly match this empirical knowledge with the Hecksher-Ohlin model’s assumptions to determine the economic objective, and thirdly, employ ‘’power in trade’’ and ‘’power through trade’’ conceptions to reveal the political objective under the established economic assumption, and finally, by shifting to the EU politics in Doha Development Agenda (DDA) I confirm the assumption of the EU’s scramble for becoming a global power in its own right. PART I :: Theoretical Framework Before turning to discuss the EU external trade policy and political its active engagement in the global trade liberalization, it is vital to indicate the theoretical underpinnings of these realities. The overall point of departure of the paper is to analyze the political nature of economic processes (Kr?tke & Underhill 2017:25) with a view to the fact that there is a systematic and reciprocal relationship between the political and economic domains (ibid.25-26) of a state, which can’t be separated. In this spirit, for the case of the EU, I argue from a liberal point of view: EU global economic policies have been driven more by economic than security interests (Simon 2017:404). Because the rationale behind the Treaty of Paris (1951) was that the economic efficiency of the integration of European states would eliminate further wars among them, and in the same vein, the establishment of the Customs Union and adoption |
