The procedure for concluding EU Trade Agreements is established by Article 218 TFEU, which splits this procedure into four phases: negotiations, signature and provisional application, conclusion, and implementation. Against the backdrop of the Lisbon Treaty, which radically reformed the procedural code governing the negotiations and conclusion of EU Trade Agreements, the EP was placed in a position to enhance and seek to advance its role and powers. One of the novelties of the Lisbon Treaty consists of a right to information and a right to consent for the Parliament during the procedure. In truth, however, Article 218(10) TFEU, which prescribes the Parliament’s right of information, is quite succinct: ‘The European Parliament shall be immediately and fully informed at all stages of the procedure’. Although Article 218 TFEU is elaborated as an extensive and explicit contract, para. 10 appears only as a broad statement of procedural principle. It is left to the EP’s shoulders to give effect to its right of information and to constantly negotiate its concrete position in the institutional triangle, Commission-Council-Parliament. Moreover, by providing in Article 218(10) TFEU only a right to information to the Parliament, this suggests that the EP is a marginal actor deprived of an impactful power of intervention during the procedure, compared to the Commission or the Council. However, not only did the EP manage to ‘win’ its right to information, but it has also become an established institutional player during the procedure for concluding EU Trade Agreements. In doing so, the Parliament deployed a series of tools in order to give meaningful content to its new right to information. The EP made good use of an entire arsenal of legal and political instruments, such as amending its Rules of Procedures, concluding interinstitutional agreements, and holding constant meetings with the Commission. These had allowed the EP to become a redoubtable institutional player, being able to visibly influence both the procedure for concluding trade agreements by the EU and their content. Several EU Trade Agreements are taken as case studies, with a particular focus on one substantive part of these agreements to demonstrate the Parliament’s actual impact: the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) Chapters. At the EP level, the focal point is the Committee on International Trade (INTA), which is responsible for EU Trade Policy.

The EU has one of the most institutionalized approaches to civil society participation in the implementation of its trade agreement obligations. Every Free Trade Agreement (FTA) since 2011 features an institutional provision obliging each Party to establish a Domestic Advisory Group (DAG), composed of a balanced representation of civil society actors. Between 2011 and 2021, the EU established 10 DAGs to advise the Commission in implementing the respective Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters. Almost all FTA provisions establishing DAGs up until 2021 require the balanced representation of economic, social and environmental stakeholders.

In 2021, the Commission changed the design of the DAG provisions in newly concluded Agreements. Since the vast majority of the currently operational DAGs were set up before this shift occurred, the scope of this paper is limited to the 10 Agreements during this period. With this in mind, it is observed that within these 10 advisory groups, there is a stark discrepancy between the participation of environmental organizations and their labour counterparts. The former are significantly underrepresented in the EU DAGs, while the latter feature prominently and are very proactive in the relevant procedures.

The objective of this paper is to empirically examine the reasons for this mismatch in participation of stakeholders. In particular, it explores why are labour actors more willing to take part and be active in EU DAGs than their environmental counterparts. As a starting point, this research paper will test the following two hypotheses. Firstly, as compared to environmental actors, labour unions have more experience with and technical expertise on institutional dialogue and (trans)national organizing, due to the tripartite model of social dialogue. Secondly, the objectives of labour actors are more actionable and backed up by concrete benchmarks through the work of the ILO.

To this end, I plan to conduct structured interviews with relevant stakeholders in Brussels, including both labour and environmental DAG members, environmental organisations active in civil society mechanisms in other EU policy fields, and with public officials from DG TRADE and the DAG Secretariat at the EESC. The findings will shed light on some factors which empower the participation of different actors in civil society mechanisms and can also inform the discourse on the challenges of integrating trade and environmental objectives.

EU trade policy has undergone a marked transformation in recent decades, moving away from insulated, technocratic negotiations towards a highly politicised domain exposed to public scrutiny, identity claims and legitimacy disputes. This paper examines the role of Geographical Indications (GIs), such as Parma ham or Champagne, in this transformation. Although GIs occupy a limited textual space in trade agreements, they often generate disproportionate political effects, shaping negotiation dynamics, ratification outcomes and broader debates on EU regulatory authority.

The paper advances a political economy account of GIs as embedded contestation devices: regulatory instruments whose political effects depend on how they redistribute material benefits, mobilise domestic coalitions and activate symbolic narratives related to heritage, sustainability and protectionism. It asks: under what conditions do GIs facilitate or obstruct the conclusion and ratification of EU trade agreements?

Empirically, the paper develops a sequential mixed-methods design. First, it introduces a new cross-agreement dataset coding GI provisions in all EU trade agreements since 2000. The dataset captures variation in GI intensity, legal design features (including coexistence rules, exceptions and transition periods), and indicators of politicisation and negotiation delay. Second, it analyses four comparative cases (EU–Mercosur, CETA, EU–Australia and EU–Japan) using document analysis and semi-structured interviews with EU officials, member-state representatives, producer organisations, NGOs and partner-country negotiators. Third, it examines parliamentary and media debates to trace how GIs are publicly framed as instruments of sustainability, cultural protection or disguised protectionism, and how these frames shape political salience over time.

The paper shows that GI clauses can act as deal makers when they support broad producer coalitions and are framed as legitimate sustainability instruments, but as deal breakers when they generate asymmetric adjustment costs or activate salient identity conflicts. By linking regulatory design, domestic contestation and discursive framing, the paper contributes to debates on EU trade policy transformation, regulatory power and the changing political economy of European integration beyond the border.