Normative vs Commercial Interests

The question of whether the European Union (EU) is a normative actor that uses its immense market power to be a force for good is one that has kept scholars intrigued for decades. Exporting its values and enhancing its economic capacity are two key foreign policy interests of the EU, which intersect in the human rights conditionality clauses included in its trade agreements. Despite its rhetoric, when conflict between these interests arises the EU tends to let commercial interest prevail and make concessions. This study examines why this is the case, by offering a case study of the bilateral trade agreements that the EU has concluded with Singapore (2014) and Vietnam (2015). The research is executed through a congruence analysis that tests the complementary explanatory power of two theories when applied to these two trade agreements. The two theories chosen for this research are an adapted version of Graham T. Allison’s Bureaucratic Politics model and a qualitatively applied variant of Heike Klüver’s Exchange model. The former presupposes that each EU institution has a clear set of preferences when it comes to human rights conditionality, that the clashing preferences create bureaucratic competition and that the salience of the negotiations determines how prepared the European Parliament and the European External Action Services (EEAS) are to advocate stronger human rights provisions. Klüver’s Exchange model, meanwhile, presupposes that the content of the conditionality clauses is the result of interest group lobbying, in which lobbying success depends on how effectively lobbying coalitions can offer information, civil support and backing of economic power to the Commission in exchange for influence. Using both theories allows for an examination of how EU institutions, interest groups and their interaction shape the EU’s position on human rights in trade negotiations. The empirical analysis shows that the commercial interests of the EU institutions and the lobbying by business interests groups reinforced each other during the trade negotiations with Singapore and Vietnam. In both cases, conditionality was contested and consequently bureaucratic competition broke out between the EU institutions about whether to prioritise norm promotion or commercial interests. Eventually, this competition was skewed in the favour of the former, also in part due to the current decision-making rules, which include a larger formal role for the Council and the Commission, with the Parliament only being able to withhold its consent, as well as the compartmentalisation of trade-related and human rights-related issues. Moreover, lack of saliency meant that the Parliament drew very few red lines in both cases. Commercial interests were also more prevalent in the interest group mobilisation patterns during the negotiations, which featured predominantly business lobbying. Those groups pushing for liberalisation and a rapid conclusion of the negotiations were more energetic in their lobbying activities compared to the groups pushing for higher regulatory standards. Meanwhile, the Commission actively sought out these groups, more than NGOs and other CSOs, to ask for their input and support for the trade agreements. All three propositions of the Bureaucratic Politics model were confirmed but there was insufficient evidence to confirm all of the Exchange model’s propositions. The model nevertheless offers a promising way to empirically capture the influence of interest groups on the content of trade agreements.