The EU’s Human Rights Promotion in China and Myanmar: Trading Rights for Might? EU Diplomacy Paper No. 5, October 2014
This paper aims to answer two questions: generally, to what extent the human rights promotion of the European Union (EU) in third countries is consistent, and more specifically, why the EU’s approach towards human rights promotion in China and Myanmar differs despite similar breaches of human rights. It compares the EU’s approach to the two countries over two time periods in the late 1980s and 1990s in the context of the EU’s evolving human rights promotion. Based on the two case studies, this paper finds that the EU’s human rights promotion in third countries varies significantly. Whereas one would expect the EU’s approach to become increasingly assertive throughout the 1990s, this has only been the case with Myanmar. China’s economic and political importance to the EU appears to have counterweighed the general rise in European attention to third countries’ human rights records. In other words, this paper finds that commercial interests take precedence over human rights concerns in case of important trading partners.
Exporting the Internal Market – Panacea or Nemesis for the European Neighbourhood Policy? Lessons from the Energy Community. EU Diplomacy Paper No. 2, 2014
Over the last decades, a constant feature of the relations between the European Union (EU) and the countries in its neighbourhood has been the export of European law. Achieved through bilateral or multilateral agreements, the export of law has led to the ‘juridification’ of external policy. The energy sector is in the vanguard of this development. European energy law has been made applicable to third countries through the European Economic Area (EEA) and, most important for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), the Energy Community. Bilateral agreements of relevance for energy include the (draft) Association Agreement with Ukraine which was rejected in November 2013 and came on the agenda again following a revolution in the country. Geopolitics has played and continues to play an eminent role in this respect. What does that mean for the export of European law to neighbouring countries? This paper argues that the export of European (energy) law does not only remain possible but is preferable to purely diplomatic relations between the EU and its neighbours if certain conditions are fulfilled. Based on the experience in the EEA and the Energy Community, multilateral integration agreements can be successful if they offer a well-designed institutional and procedural architecture based on mutual commitments, extend the benefits of the internal market to the participating third countries and create ‘win-win’ situations in satisfying also the participating third countries' vital interests in return for undergoing the hardship of economic reforms.
"Global Europe": An Initial Assessment of the European Commission's New Trade Policy
The principal elements of the European Commission's recent Communication on its external trade policy (titled "Global Europe") are assessed in this paper. Certain shifts are discernible in the Commission's position, in particular as they relate to the prominence given to market access objectives and to bilateral and regional trade agreements. Even so, this latest Communication is probably best thought of as an evolution in the Commission's trade policy and not an abrupt break with the past. Particular attention is given here to the potential payoffs from the proposed bilateral trade negotiations with selected Asian nations and the need for further thinking on the Commission's part with respect to the multilateral trading system.