The Role of EU Institutions in Common Trade Policy: An Assessment on EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement

What are the roles of the European Union (EU)’s main institutions in common trade policy? To address this question, this study uses a political-economic approach. The positions of the European Commission, Council of the European Union and European Parliament on EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) are examined. The study uses content analysis as a research methodology, based on a categorization of values and economic interests projected by the EU’s contemporary trade strategy “Trade for All”. Differently from previous studies which use a political-economic approach to analyze the EU’s external relations with developing countries, this article makes a contribution to EU trade policy literature by combining a political-economy perspective with an institutional one to examine a EU trade agreement signed with a highly industrialized country. Within this context, the findings reveal that the Parliament and Council are more value-oriented, than economic interest-oriented. The Commission is instead found slightly more economic interest-oriented than value-oriented. However, the priorities of three institutions do not diverge significantly in terms of political economy. Each institution manages to impose its own priorities on both the (value-related) normative and (interest-related) material parts of CETA and agrees on producing a neoliberal economic outcome.