IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rsc/rsceui/2020_26.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Pursuit of Non-Trade Policy Objectives in EU Trade Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Ingo Borchert
  • Paola Conconi,
  • Mattia Di Ubaldo, and Cristina Herghelegiu

Abstract

The European Union (EU) often conditions preferential access to its market upon compliance by its trading partners with Non-Trade Policy Objectives (NTPOs), including human rights and labor and environmental standards. We systematically document the coverage of NTPOs in EU trade agreements and in its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). We then examine the extent to which trade agreements and GSP programs can be used to promote NTPOs. Preferential trade agreements are negotiated under multilateral rules, which require members to eliminate all tariffs reciprocally. As a result, once a trade agreement enters into force, the EU cannot easily restrict or extend access to its market so as to “punish bad behavior” or “reward good behavior” on NTPOs by its trading partners. By contrast, GSP preferences are granted on a unilateral basis, so they can be limited or extended, depending on compliance with NTPOs. EU GSP programs can thus provide a carrot-and-stick mechanism to promote NTPOs in partner countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Ingo Borchert & Paola Conconi, & Mattia Di Ubaldo, and Cristina Herghelegiu, 2020. "The Pursuit of Non-Trade Policy Objectives in EU Trade Policy," RSCAS Working Papers 2020_26, European University Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:rsc:rsceui:2020_26
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/66882/RSCAS%202020_26.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1814/66882
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paola Conconi & Carlo Perroni, 2002. "Issue Linkage and Issue Tie-in in International Negotiations," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/5839, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    2. Henrik Horn & Petros C. Mavroidis & André Sapir, 2010. "Beyond the WTO? An Anatomy of EU and US Preferential Trade Agreements," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(11), pages 1565-1588, November.
    3. Lorand Bartels, 2003. "The WTO Enabling Clause and Positive Conditionality in the European Community's GSP Program," Journal of International Economic Law, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(2), pages 507-532, June.
    4. Aaditya Mattoo & Nadia Rocha & Michele Ruta, 2020. "Handbook of Deep Trade Agreements," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 34055.
    5. Emanuel Ornelas, 2016. "Special and Differential Treatment for Developing Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 5823, CESifo.
    6. Sapir, Andre, 1998. "The political economy of EC regionalism," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-5), pages 717-732, May.
    7. Koch, Svea, 2015. "A Typology of Political Conditionality Beyond Aid: Conceptual Horizons Based on Lessons from the European Union," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 97-108.
    8. Grossman, Gene M. & Sykes, Alan O., 2005. "A preference for development: the law and economics of GSP," World Trade Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(1), pages 41-67, March.
    9. Abbott, Kenneth W. & Keohane, Robert O. & Moravcsik, Andrew & Slaughter, Anne-Marie & Snidal, Duncan, 2000. "The Concept of Legalization," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 54(3), pages 401-419, July.
    10. Conconi, Paola & Perroni, Carlo, 2002. "Issue linkage and issue tie-in in multilateral negotiations," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 423-447, August.
    11. Nuno Limão, 2018. "Trade policy, cross-border externalities and lobbies: do linked agreements enforce more cooperative outcomes?," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Policy Externalities and International Trade Agreements, chapter 9, pages 257-281, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    12. Vichithri Jayasinghe, 2015. "The Legality of the European Union’s Special Incentive Arrangement," Journal of International Economic Law, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(3), pages 555-575.
    13. Conconi, Paola & Perroni, Carlo, 2015. "Special and Differential Treatment of Developing Countries in the WTO," World Trade Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(1), pages 67-86, January.
    14. Lisa Lechner, 2016. "The domestic battle over the design of non-trade issues in preferential trade agreements," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(5), pages 840-871, September.
    15. James Harrison & Mirela Barbu & Liam Campling & Ben Richardson & Adrian Smith, 2019. "Governing Labour Standards through Free Trade Agreements: Limits of the European Union's Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(2), pages 260-277, March.
    16. Daniela Donno & Michael Neureiter, 2018. "Can human rights conditionality reduce repression? Examining the European Union’s economic agreements," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 335-357, September.
    17. Hofmann,Claudia & Osnago,Alberto & Ruta,Michele, 2017. "Horizontal depth : a new database on the content of preferential trade agreements," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7981, The World Bank.
    18. Jayatilleke S. Bandara & Athula Naranpanawa, 2015. "Garment Industry in Sri Lanka and the Removal of GSP Plus by EU," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(9), pages 1438-1461, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kiyoyasu Tanaka, 2022. "The European Union's withdrawal of trade preferences for Cambodia," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(11), pages 3398-3419, November.
    2. Bernard Hoekman & Charles Sabel, 2021. "Plurilateral Cooperation as an Alternative to Trade Agreements: Innovating One Domain at a Time," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 12(S3), pages 49-60, April.
    3. Mattia Ubaldo & Steven McGuire & Vikrant Shirodkar, 2022. "Voluntary programs and emissions revisited: What is the effect of EU trade agreements with environmental provisions?," Journal of International Business Policy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(4), pages 467-489, December.
    4. Di Ubaldo, Mattia & Gasiorek, Michael, 2022. "Non-trade provisions in trade agreements and FDI," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    5. Khorana, Sangeeta & Caram, Santiago & Biagetti, Marco, 2021. "Developmental relevance of Everything but Arms: Implications for Bangladesh after LDC graduation," MPRA Paper 116258, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Birgit Meyer & Isabel Pham, 2023. "Menschenrechte und Lieferketten. Ein Überblick über Sorgfaltspflichten entlang von Lieferketten in österreichischen Unternehmen," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 71233, March.
    7. Di Ubaldo, Mattia & Gasiorek, Michael, 2022. "Non-trade provisions in trade agreements and FDI," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    8. Suttner, Stefan, 2023. "Issue linkage and trade policy uncertainty: Evidence from trade preferences for developing countries," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 07/2023, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.
    9. Ayele, Getaneh Mihret, 2021. "The Effect of Everything But Arms Trade Preference on the Exports of Ethiopia: Empirical Evidence Using Gravity Model," Ethiopian Journal of Economics, Ethiopian Economics Association, vol. 30(02), October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Henrik Horn & Petros C. Mavroidis, 2014. "Multilateral environmental agreements in the WTO: Silence speaks volumes," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 10(1), pages 147-166, March.
    2. Jacopo Timini & Nicola Cortinovis & Fernando López Vicente, 2022. "The heterogeneous effects of trade agreements with labour provisions," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(9), pages 2820-2853, September.
    3. Markusen, James R., 2012. "Per-Capita Income as a Determinant of International Trade and Environmental Policies," Discussion Papers 2013-06, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    4. Bernard Hoekman, 2014. "Sustaining multilateral trade cooperation in a multipolar world economy," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 241-260, June.
    5. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2021. "Effect of the Utilization of Non-Reciprocal Trade Preferences offered by the QUAD on Economic Growth in Beneficiary Countries," EconStor Preprints 242848, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    6. Di Ubaldo, Mattia & Gasiorek, Michael, 2022. "Non-trade provisions in trade agreements and FDI," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    7. Bernard Hoekman & Charles Sabel, 2019. "Open Plurilateral Agreements, International Regulatory Cooperation and the WTO," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 10(3), pages 297-312, September.
    8. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm & Iyer, Harish, 2021. "Effect of Aid for Trade and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows on the Utilization of Unilateral Trade Preferences offered by the QUAD countries," EconStor Preprints 238211, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    9. Neri--Lainé,Matteo & Orefice,Gianluca & Ruta,Michele, 2023. "Deep Trade Agreements and Heterogeneous Firms Exports," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10277, The World Bank.
    10. Thomas Kuhn & Radomir Pestow & Anja Zenker, 2018. "Endogenous Climate Coalitions and Free Trade - Building the Missing Link," Chemnitz Economic Papers 018, Department of Economics, Chemnitz University of Technology.
    11. Díaz-Mora Carmen & Esteve-Pérez Silviano & Gil-Pareja Salvador, 2024. "Exploring the Heterogeneous Impact of Trade Agreements on Trade: Depth Matters," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 18(1), pages 1-13, January.
    12. Borchert,Ingo & Di Ubaldo,Mattia, 2021. "Deep Services Trade Agreements and their Effect on Trade and Value Added," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9608, The World Bank.
    13. Richard Chisik & Harun Onder, 2017. "Does Limited Punishment Limit The Scope For Cross Retaliation?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(3), pages 1213-1230, July.
    14. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2023. "Effects of the Utilization of Non-Reciprocal Trade Preferences Offered by QUAD Countries on Economic Growth in Beneficiary Countries," KDI Journal of Economic Policy, Korea Development Institute (KDI), vol. 45(1), pages 33-68.
    15. Jaime DE MELO & Marcelo OLARREAGA, 2017. "Trade Related Institutions and Development," Working Papers P199, FERDI.
    16. Nuno Limão, 2016. "Preferential Trade Agreements," NBER Working Papers 22138, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. James R. Markusen, 2014. "Per-Capital Income as a Determinant of International Trade and Environment Policies," CESifo Working Paper Series 4618, CESifo.
    18. Thomas Kuhn & Radomir Pestow & Anja Zenker, 2017. "Building Climate Coalitions on Preferential Free Trade Agreements," Chemnitz Economic Papers 011, Department of Economics, Chemnitz University of Technology, revised Jul 2017.
    19. Thomas Kuhn & Radomir Pestow & Anja Zenker, 2019. "Building Climate Coalitions on Preferential Free Trade Agreements," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 74(2), pages 539-569, October.
    20. Richard Chisik, 2010. "Limited Incremental Linking and Unlinked Trade Agreements," Working Papers 023, Ryerson University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Trade Agreements; GSP; Conditionality; Non-Trade Policy Objectives;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • F50 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - General
    • J80 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - General
    • K32 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Energy, Environmental, Health, and Safety Law
    • K38 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Human Rights Law; Gender Law; Animal Rights Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rsc:rsceui:2020_26. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: RSCAS web unit (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rsiueit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.