Conference Agenda

In response to the escalating global climate and biodiversity crises, the European Union (EU) has launched an avalanche of autonomous trade-sustainability policies, namely import bans on goods linked to forced labour and deforestation and a carbon border adjustment mechanism. Numerous EU trade partners have expressed concerns, some signalling outright opposition. For now, scholarship has characterised these measures as reflecting the EU’s ‘unilateral turn’ in trade policy, broadly speaking. However, the implications of these new policies for other trade subsystems (bilateral and multilateral) and governance systems (UNFCCC) remain underexplored. This paper seeks to investigate the cross-domain effects of the EU’s new array of autonomous trade-sustainability instruments by investigating how these are perceived and treated by trade partners across i) bilateral trade and sustainable development implementation dialogues under the EU’s free trade agreements, ii) multilateral trade-environmental negotiations at the World Trade Organization, and iii) meetings under the climate change regime (UNFCCC), where the EU’s unilateral measures are raised. The study relies on systemic text analysis and ‘theory-testing’ process-tracing methodology, using original empirical data obtained through qualitative fieldwork. The findings emphasise the need for a more holistic approach to trade policy research; both across trade subsystems and its interaction with other governance fora. Empirically, the study highlights the contentious nature of the EU’s unilateral policies and the cross-domain objections and arguments raised by its trade partners, suggesting the EU’s external image has been notably weakened by these policies, a development that merits further investigation.

The European Green Deal has led to much debate about the EU’s new unilateral trade instruments, but how has EU trade policy actually changed on the bilateral level since 2019? This study assesses environmental changes in the EU’s bilateral trade policy after the European Green Deal in a long-term perspective. Theoretically, it draws on Peter Hall’s three-level conceptualization of policy change in economic policy, which distinguishes between the settings of individual policy instruments, the mix of several policy instruments, and the over-arching policy paradigms. To assess change in the trade-environment nexus, the article proposes to distinguish between five paradigms on the governance of the trade-environment nexus: purism, exception, coherence, embeddedness, and detrade. It then conducts a congruence analysis of the EU’s trade policy against these five paradigms on two levels, the ideational level of trade strategies and the design and mix of bilateral trade policy instruments, such as trade agreements and impact assessments. The results suggest that the EGD has contributed to consolidate a longer trend in EU trade policy towards a paradigm of coherence between trade and environmental goals but not led to environmental embeddedness because the issue of critical ecological products remains unadressed. The findings contribute to the literature on the role of ideas and institutions in EU economic policy making in a context of political uncertainty, environmental crises and economic tensions.

An important way in which the European Union (EU) handles the environment-trade nexus is via Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters (TSDC) in its bilateral free trade agreements. TSDCs have been criticised for lacking enforcement mechanisms that enable sanctions in the form of a withdrawal of trade preferences. Recently, the EU has adopted a stronger focus on the monitoring and implementation of TSDCs. This article assesses the extent to which this ambition has been put into practice. To this end, it conducts a documentary analysis of reports and minutes of the TSDC Joint Committees for implementation, unpacking for the first time how environmental matters are approached in these. The analysis reveals these Committees mostly serve an informative function, although collaboration on environmental initiatives is also prevalent. In terms of holding the parties to account and policing the implementation of TSDCs, the EU undertakes this function more than its partners, and especially towards developing states. In addition, TSDC Committees are shown to be important fora for exchanges to reinforce EU unilateral environment-trade measures, weakening opposition to these.