THE NEW POLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

In the past years, trade politics within the European Union have seen a number of structural changes both in content and process. They range from the institutional evolution of EU’s policy-making to the expansion of its trade agenda to new issues, through the engagement of non-traditional social actors. All set against the background of a changing international trade environment. These developments, though distinct, are strongly interrelated and all together add up to a 'new trade politics’. Through the use of quantitative and qualitative data and methods, this Ph.D. thesis seeks to expand our understanding of recent evolutions in the EU trade action. In particular, it sheds light on how the above-mentioned changes have affected the way EU trade policy is made and pursued, by empirically researching three of its most relevant aspects. First, this work assesses the evolution of European trade and investment policies from the early 1990s to date, in light of the alleged retreat of the liberal international economic order. Findings highlight a recent departure from Brussels’ traditional neoliberal stance, largely driven by a shift towards a ‘more realist’ understanding of economic interdependence. Second, the dissertation tackles the recent politicization of EU trade policy and, more specifically, the structural causes behind the varying degrees of contentiousness among trade agreements. The results suggest that politicization is reached through multiple causal paths given by the co-occurrence of specific conditions. Most notably, institutional reforms introduced by the Lisbon Treaty emerge as the main drivers of this phenomenon, the chances of politicization result greater when negotiations involve countries whose trade structure is poorly compatible with EU's, while the degree of public support for the Union is of particular relevance in the case of 'deep and comprehensive' agreements that touch on sensitive domestic issues. Third, drawing on the emerging research agenda on the 'parliamentarisation' of EU trade policy-making, this thesis explores the relationship between the Members of the European Parliament and the European public in the post-Lisbon era. The analysis, which focuses on MEPs' rhetorical responsiveness during negotiations of preferential trade agreements, shows that their propensity to address public preferences and concerns depends on a number of factors, including the degree of salience of trade negotiations and party affiliation.