Who Captures Whom? Trade Policy Lobbying in the European Union

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Who Captures Whom? Trade Policy Lobbying in the

European Union

Cornelia Woll

To cite this version:

Cornelia Woll. Who Captures Whom? Trade Policy Lobbying in the European Union. Coen David,

Richardson Jeremy. Lobbying in the European Union: Institutions, Actors and Issues, Oxford Uni-

versity Press, pp.268-288, 2009, 9780199207350. �hal-00972851�

Trade Policy Lobbying in the European Union: Who Captures Whom?

Cornelia Woll

Pre-Print

Published in David Coen and Jeremy Richardson (eds.), Lobbying in the European

Union: Institutions, Actors and Issues, (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 268-288.

This version: October 2008

Introduction

Trade policy is a classic field for the study of private influence on policy-making.

Firms and industries can gain clear advantages by protecting their markets from

foreign competition or by gaining access to other countries. A large portion of the

literature on international political economy therefore explains policy choices with

reference to the demands of constituent interests (see Frieden and Martin 2002). For

anybody interested in business lobbying, trade policy would seem to be the most

appropriate place to start.

And yet, comparing trade policy lobbying in the U.S. and the EU leaves many

observers surprised. Aggressive business lobbying on trade issues is much less

common in Brussels than it is in Washington, D.C. (e.g. Coen 1999; cf. Woll 2006).

Shaffer (2003: 6) underlines that U.S. firms and trade associations are very proactive

in business–government relations on trade policy. This “bottom-up” approach

contrasts with the “top down” EU approach where public authority, in particular the

European Commission, plays the predominant entrepreneurial role.

While the U.S. Trade Representative responded to onslaughts of private

sector lobbying reinforced by congressional phone calls and committee

grillings, the Commission had to contact firms to contact it (Shaffer

2003: 70).

Indeed, the European Commission has made a concerted effort to integrate

firms and other private actors into the trade policy-making process in order to gain

bargaining leverage not simply vis-à-vis third countries, but also over its own member

states (Van den Hoven 2002; Elsig 2007). By helping to elaborate policy solutions,

interest group participation increases the legitimacy of the Commission on external

trade issues.

This reverse lobbying is not without consequences. While firms do

increasingly seize the opportunities available to them at the supranational level, EU

trade policy lobbying is marked by a particular logic. Firms face a trade-off between

pressing for immediate advantages and responding to the interests of the European

Commission, which promises them access to the policy-making process (Broscheid

and Coen 2003). Since the Commission is not immediately accountable to

constituency interests, it can select interest groups and firms that it prefers to work

with and ignore others (Grande 1996). In selecting private partners, the Commission

follows two objectives. First, it requires technical expertise to develop its policy

proposals (Bouwen 2002). Second, and on trade issues in particular, it is interested in

finding pan-European solutions to prevent disputes between the member states that

would risk stalling trade negotiations (Shaffer 2003: 78-79). When protectionist

measures depend on national boundaries, industry privileges are likely to conflict with

the Commission’s goals. Firms therefore have to decide between lobbying for their

immediate advantage at the risk of being ignored, and framing their demands in terms

of a pan-European interest even if they are not certain of obtaining an advantage.

This logic creates two distinct channels for trade policy lobbying in the EU. A

firm or industry interested in classic protectionism is most successful when it uses a

national lobbying strategy directed at the member states and ultimately the Council of

Ministers. Supranational lobbying, in turn, requires framing demands to include a

pan-European dimensions. Lobbyists thus have to find ways of proposing pan-

European protectionism, most commonly in the form of pan-European trade

regulation (Young 2004). Alternatively, they can lobby for trade liberalization in

order to establish or maintain contacts with the European Commission and then hope

to integrate more precise demands in the details of trade regulation or the

implementation of agreements.

By studying the Europeanization of trade policy and the instruments firms

employ to affect EU trade policy, a first part of this paper underlines the complexity

individual firms have to manage in order to influence the Community stance on

international trade negotiations. As an illustration of the EU trade policy lobbying

logic, a second part then turns to concrete policy examples and compares the

protectionist lobbying on agriculture and textiles and clothing with the lobbying on

service trade liberalization in financial services and telecommunications. The

conclusion discusses the extent to which the findings on business lobbying have

implications for other actors seeking to affect trade policy, most notably NGOs or

public interest groups.

1. Trade policy lobbying in the multi-level system

Trade policy is one of the most integrated policy areas in the EU, and yet the

struggle over the competence distribution between the supranational institutions and

the member states is crucial for understanding lobbying in this domain. Before turning

to the key instruments for corporate lobbying on EU trade, it is therefore necessary to

understand the Europeanization of trade policy and the history of competence

delegation from the member states to the EU Institutions.

1.1. The integration of trade policy-making

The common commercial policy is as old as the European Economic

Community itself. With the Treaty of Rome in 1957, member states agreed that a

customs union requires a common external tariff, common trade agreements with

third countries and uniform application across member states (Elsig 2002; Meunier

2005). They granted the European institutions the right to speak on their behalf on

these issues in external trade negotiations.

Initially, this authority applied to tariff

rates, anti-dumping and subsidies, which were indeed the main stakes in early

multilateral trade negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

(GATT). During the Tokyo Round of GATT (1973-9) and especially during the

Uruguay Round (1986-94), non-tariff barriers to trade started to gain importance,

including health, environmental and social aspects of trade policy, and the domestic

regulatory issues applying to the trade in services. European trade authority did not

apply to many of these issues, which pushed the Community to redefine trade

competences and the degree of delegation from the member states to the EU. In

particular, it stirred up a debate over which issues should fall under “exclusive” or

“mixed” competence (Meunier and Nicolaïdis 1999; Meunier 2000a).

Mixed competence means that trade authority is delegated on an ad hoc basis

to the Community. The setting of objectives and the ratification of the negotiation

results are subject to a unanimous vote by the Council, whereas both require only a

Articles 131-135 (ex 110-116) of the Treaty on European Union. Article 300 (ex

228) provides the supranational institutions with powers to conclude trade agreements

with third countries.

qualified majority under exclusive competence. Over time, many areas of mixed

competence have been dealt with pragmatically at first, by letting the Commission

negotiate without fully resolving the competence dispute. For the results to be

adopted, however, the legal competence question has become pressing. When the

European Court of Justice decided effectively against an automatic expansion of trade

competences in 1994, the Commission and the member states first agreed on a code of

conduct and later adopted a special competence transfer procedure in 1996 (Elsig

2002: 90-101; Meunier 2000b: 338-40). It was not until 2003 that the Treaty of Nice

finally amended Article 133 and provided for the exclusive competence over services

and intellectual property rights, with the exception of cultural and audio-visual

services. The struggle underlines how heavily disputed the transfer of authority is.

Delegation is a delicate matter, even in this highly integrated policy domain, and

control mechanisms employed by member states are tight (De Bièvre and Dür 2005).

The various control mechanisms become evident when one considers the

different stages in the trade policy-making cycle. Woolcock (2000) distinguishes

between (1) the setting of objectives, (2) the conduct of negotiations and (3) the

adoption of results.

The negotiation objectives are decided by the General Affairs

Council of foreign ministers on the basis of a Commission proposal. Long before the

formal adoption of a mandate, the Commission submits the proposal to the member

states or, more precisely, to the national trade officials representing their governments

on the Article 133 Committee (see Johnson 1998). Discussions during this phase are

crucial, since the Commission can use the Article 133 Committee “as a sounding

board to ensure that it is on the right track” (Shaffer 2003: 79). Trying to achieve a

consensus on the mandate, the Article 133 Committee examines and amends the

proposal before handing it to the Committee of Permanent Representatives

(COREPER) and eventually the Council. Neither the European Parliament nor the

general public participate formally in these early negotiations, which take place

behind closed doors in order to shield the negotiation objectives from the trading

partners. Woolcock (2000: 380) underlines how sharply the role of the European

Parliament contrasts with the role of the U.S. Congress. Indeed, constituents lobbying

their representatives have more direct control over the negotiating mandate in the

U.S., where Congress can grant or withhold negotiation authority.

The conduct of negotiations is the responsibility of the Commission, but even

in areas of exclusive competence, consultation with the member states is crucial. The

Article 133 Committee closely follows negotiations and the EU negotiation team

meets daily with member state representatives. On sensitive issues such as service

trade liberalization, trading partners have jokingly remarked that the Commission

negotiates more with the member states than with the rest of the world (Woll 2004:

227). The Commission, furthermore, tries to keep the External Economic Relations

Committee of the European Parliament informed, even though the Parliament has no

speaking rights during negotiations. Results are adopted by the General Affairs

Council either by qualified majority voting under exclusive competence or by

unanimous decision under mixed competence. In practice, however, consensus

decisions are the norm (Woolcock 2000: 384).

The importance of consensus between the member states applies equally to

dispute settlement procedures. The most common way to bring a dispute to the WTO

is for the Commission to initiate a case after consultation with the Article 133

Committee. Formal procedure requires conflictual issues to be transferred to

COREPER and subsequently to the Council, should all other instances fail to resolve

the dispute. In all the time the WTO has employed the dispute settlement procedure,

this has only happened once.

According to Shaffer (2003: 80) “neither committee

members nor the Commission wish to transfer decision-making authority on trade

matters from themselves, who are trade experts, to the Council, which consists of

foreign affairs ministers.”

To summarize, all stages of trade policy-making are characterized by an

explicit desire to achieve and maintain consensus between the member states. The

Commission cannot negotiate effectively if the EU member states are not behind the

Community objectives. The interlocking of member state control and Commission

authority are thus the two important dimensions of trade policy-making that interest

groups and firms need to take into account if they wish to lobby effectively.

1.2. Instruments and venues for corporate lobbying

Consultation with private actors happens at various stages of EU trade policy-

making. Business interests, furthermore, affect the use of instruments of commercial

defence, with which the Community tries to ensure equal competition for European

and foreign firms. During trade negotiations and with respect to instruments of

commercial defence, the solicitation by the Commission plays a key role in shaping

the access of private actors to the policy-making process.

The EU complaint concerned the Helms-Burton Act, a US law sanctioning European

foreign investors in Cuba.

1.2.1. Trade policy consultation with private actors

Even though discussions between the Commission and the Article 133

Committee on negotiation objectives are not public, the Commission consults

extensively with firms, interest groups and NGOs in order to define specific stakes in

its proposal. The EU consultation procedure is less formal than the system of Trade

Advisory Committees in the U.S., but the Commission DG Trade and DG Industry

maintain stable relations with groups such as the Union of Industries of the European

Community (UNICE) or sectoral business associations. In 1998, the Commission tried

to formalize its consultation and include a broader range of interest groups by

instituting a Civil Society Dialogue on the upcoming round of negotiations (Van den

Hoven 2002; De Bièvre and Dür 2007). Both business interests and public interest

groups now participate in the Civil Society Dialogue. However, unlike the U.S.

advisory system, the Commission is under no legal obligation to consult with the Civil

Society Dialogue or to take its reports into consideration.

Yet input from interest groups is valuable to the European Commission

because it can help strengthen its negotiation stances vis-à-vis the member states and

its trading partners. During the Uruguay Round, American negotiators cooperated

closely with U.S. industry representatives. By contrast, the European business

community was largely absent from the negotiations, despite the importance of

multilateral trading stakes. Only UNICE declared in favour of the Commission

position, and Jacques Delors complained openly about the lack of business support

(Grant 1994: 83-5; Van den Hoven 2002: 10).

Integrating business interests into the formulation of trade objectives therefore

became an important goal for the European Commission in the 1990s. One of the

most noted initiatives was the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD), founded by

the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and European Trade Commissioner Sir

Leon Brittan in 1995. The aim of the TABD was to bring together CEOs of American

and European companies so that they could “pre-negotiate” issues relevant to

transatlantic trade (Coen and Grant 2000; Cowles 2001). Similarly, the Commission

encouraged the creation of other consultative associations, such as the European

Service Forum, launched in January 1999. Initiatives such as the Civil Society

Dialogue, the TABD or the European Service Forum illustrate the extent to which the

Commission solicits participation from private actors and is willing to listen to their

suggestions.

However, individual groups have few means of putting direct pressure on the

Commission to ensure that their demands will be taken into account. Within each

member state, they can try to lobby their governments to affect the consensus between

member states and the Commission during all phases of the policy cycle. They can

also contact the European Parliament, which holds hearings and produces reports on

trade issues, but this will do little more than shape the atmosphere in which EU

objectives are determined and monitored (Woolcock 2000: 380). During the adoption

phase, national parliaments and the European Parliament may play a greater role in

the future, especially now that co-decision has been extended by the Treaty of

Amsterdam, but lobbying on trade policy still concentrates on the interchange

between the Commission and member governments.

1.2.2. Instruments of commercial defence

In addition to ongoing trade negotiations, business lobbying can also target

separate administrative procedures to ensure protection against ‘unfair’ foreign

competition. These instruments of commercial defence include anti-dumping and

countervailing duties and the Trade Barriers Regulation of 1994. All of these

administrative instruments require the identification of unfair competition practices,

for which firms often have better information than governments. Over time, the EU

has therefore tried to facilitate business input, so as to identify the greatest possible

number of trade barriers or obstacles to competition.

Anti-dumping measures, by far the most commonly used instrument of

commercial defence, seek to punish exporters who sell their goods in the EU below

the cost of their domestic production. The procedure begins with a complaint filed by

industry representatives, which the Commission then decides to pursue or not. In the

event of an investigation, the Commission studies in consultation with the national

authorities whether there is evidence of dumping or injury to a European industry and

seeks proof that the imposition of duties would be in the ‘Community interest’.

Hearings are held to define the Community interest and to make it difficult for narrow

protectionist interests to pursue anti-dumping actions (Woolcock 2000: 389-90). In

fact, petitioners need to represent 50% of the injured industry, which makes it hard for

individual firms to file a complaint (De Bièvre 2002: 86). After the imposition of a

provisional duty by the Commission, the Council can decide by simple majority to

reject the duty or to impose definite action.

Until the beginning of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which replaced

GATT in 1995, the commercial policy of the EU was relatively defensive. European

trade officials had simultaneously to respond to demands for protection through anti-

dumping measures and to face the U.S., which actively sought to dismantle European

trade barriers. Faced with “aggressive unilateralism” from the U.S. (Bhagwati and

Patrick 1991), the EU had sought to create a New Commercial Policy Instrument in

1984, which tried to emulate U.S. business–government cooperation in identifying

trade barriers. Unlike the U.S. model, the European procedure was marred with

difficulties. In its ten year history, European firms filed only seven petitions (Shaffer

2003: 84-94). In December 1994, the instrument was replaced by the Trade Barriers

Regulation, which supporters were hoping would have more teeth. Innovations

included the right of individual firms to petition the Commission directly, as may

member governments. Furthermore, the petitioner no longer needs to provide proof of

injury in order to file the complaint. The Trade Barrier Regulation requires the EU to

exhaust all available multilateral dispute settlement procedures before resorting to

unilateral action, which means that the procedure serves mostly as a means of

identifying potential WTO dispute settlement cases.

Indeed, soliciting industry help in identifying such cases was one of the main

motivations behind the Trade Barrier Regulation. Traditional international trade

disputes were initiated by the Commission in consultation with the Article 133

Committee. Lacking close cooperation with business interests and trade associations,

the EU was much less able to exploit the WTO Dispute Settlement Body when it was

first established in 1995. The U.S., by contrast, brought several high-profile cases

against the EU, and filed 8 of the first 15 complaints resulting in panels.

Commission

The EU, in turn, brought only two, both jointly with the US, against third countries

Gregory C. Shaffer (2003), Defending Interests: Public-Private Partnerships in WTO

Litigation. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press..

officials felt that they needed to show more initiative and started to work actively to

gain industry support and industry’s technical expertise on existing trade barriers.

In February 1996, the Commission launched a new Market Access Strategy,

tactically announced by Sir Leon Brittan as “D-Day for European Trade Policy” to an

audience of major exporting companies (Shaffer 2003: 68). Within DG Trade, a

Market Access Unit was established, the primary role of which was to interact with

business actors to gather information on existing trade barriers. A central pillar of the

work was the maintenance of a Market Access Database (see De Bièvre 2002: 96-

100).

By centralizing information on trade barriers and involving firms in the

collection of information, the EU was hoping to be able to counter the aggressive

private–public partnerships of U.S. trade policy. As the administration of instruments

of commercial defence shows, the Commission explicitly urged business participation

in instruments of commercial defence in order to gain leverage over its trading

partners.

1.3. Trade-offs in multi-level trade lobbying

The study of trade negotiations and of the administration of instruments of

commercial defence illustrates how important business participation is for the internal

and external negotiations of the European Commission. The solicitation is based on

the Commission’s hopes of increasing its technical expertise, its legitimacy, its ability

to maintain consensus among the member states and its leverage in trade negotiations.

However, since Commission officials do not depend on re-election by constituency

Available from within the EU at

http://mkaccdb.eu.int.

interests, firms cannot exert direct pressure on European officials to reinforce their

demands. Therefore, business access is not automatic; it depends on the degree to

which private actors can offer the elements the Commission is interested in. Business

lobbying on trade is thus marked by a particular exchange logic, where firms provide

expertise and support in order to gain access to the policy process (Bouwen 2002;

Mahoney 2004).

The selective access at the European level creates a two-channel logic for

business lobbyists, which specifies different routes according to the content that firms

seek to defend. Classical protectionism is easier to achieve in interaction with national

governments, while cooperation on the elaboration of pan-European solutions

promises an excellent working relationship with the European Commission. Pan-

European trade policy lobbying can be in support of liberalization, but it can also

consist of regulatory protectionism that does not discriminate on the grounds of

nationality but appeals instead to a greater Community interest.

In fact, the tendency of the EU to defend a rather liberal external trade policy

is relatively recent. Hanson (1998) argues that member states maintained national

levels of protection in sensitive sectors throughout the 1970s and 1980s, despite the

fact that a common commercial policy was enshrined in the Treaty of Rome.

However, through the completion of the internal market, member states lost their

ability to use national policy tools, in particular due to the legislative instruments

available to the Commission in enforcing market integration (Schmidt 2000).

Moreover, EU voting rules make it difficult to replace national policies with

protectionism at the EU level (Hanson 1998: 56). Consensual decision-making on

trade policy means that measures favouring the sensitive industries in only a few

countries will be vetoed by other countries.

Yet, even if the Commission is more liberal than many of the member states,

supranational trade policy initiatives are not always aimed at reducing trade barriers.

In fact, the Commission does not have an a priori tendency to liberalize; it merely

seeks to develop pan-European policy solutions that do not create cleavages between

member states in order to avoid deadlock. Liberalization happens to be a pan-

European solution, but pan-European regulation is also possible. Many have noted

that the liberalization objectives of the EU often appear like an exercise in

international regulation rather than the complete abandonment of all trade barriers

(Winters 2001; Cremona 2001). Alasdair Young (2002) argues that EU external

policy is most accurately described as an attempt to extend European cooperation to

third countries. Moreover, regulatory harmonization within the single market

infrequently creates “regulatory peaks”, as many of the prominent trade disputes

between the EU and third countries illustrate (Young 2004). In other words, even

though we should expect protectionist lobbying to employ national routes and

businesses supporting liberalization to develop partnerships with the European

Commission, we might also find lobbyists defending new kinds of regulatory

protectionism that applies equally across member states.

Regulatory protectionism can be especially successful if elaborated in cooperation with directorate-

generals specialized in a particular sector of economic activity. While DG Trade might push for trade

liberalization, DG Agriculture, DG Industry, DG Transport and Energy or DG Information Society will

be more likely to elaborate sector specific regulatory arrangements that enshrine advantages for

European industries in world markets. I thank Manfred Elsig for raising this point.

2. Lobbying for protectionism or liberalization

What does this mean for industry lobbyists and why is it relevant to

distinguish between classic protectionism and pan-European regulatory

protectionism? With few exceptions, European trade policy applies to all industries

alike, so we should expect producers and firms to move their lobbying efforts to the

supranational level. Surprisingly, this is not the case. By comparing lobbying in

agriculture and textiles and clothing, we can see that protectionist lobbying is only

successful when it is supported within the member states, which is why lobbyists

eventually have to concentrate their efforts on the domestic route. Tellingly, lobbyists

targeting the Commission to maintain import restrictions on textiles and clothing were

ignored in the absence of member state pressure. By contrast, a study of the service

trade shows how business lobbyists have been able to influence the European

Commission’s objective once they embraced liberalization as a policy objective. This

was easy for the exporting companies in financial services, but required an important

redefinition of policy demands in telecommunication services, where firms were not

naturally inclined to support liberalization. Distinguishing between the types of

demands can thus help to explain the success or failure of trade policy lobbying in the

EU.

2.1. Resistance to foreign competition: agriculture and textiles

2.1.1. Agriculture

The agricultural market, one of the most integrated markets in the European

Union, is characterized by a highly centralized structure of interest representation at

the supranational level: the Comité des organizations professionnelles agricoles

(COPA), founded in 1958. Despite the close, traditionally quasi-corporatist relations

between COPA and the EU Institution on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP),

lobbying on multilateral trade issues has, most importantly, passed through national

channels. Starting in the 1980s, the crisis of CAP dissolved the consensus between

national agricultural organizations and left space for a more pluralist organization of

agricultural interest groups. Several unified demonstration in Brussels

notwithstanding, the diversification of interest representation implies that interest

representation on external trade is mediated by the member states (Delorme 2002).

Indeed, during the first years of the Uruguay Round, national farmer

organizations, most notably in France and Germany, lobbied heavily to ensure that

their governments did not cede ground on agricultural liberalization. In December

1990, strong internal divisions between the EU member states led to a rejection of the

settlement on agriculture that was supposed to conclude the Uruguay Round. The

Commission hoped to strike a compromise by tying the multilateral negotiations to a

reform of CAP. At the beginning of the CAP reform process, the Commission had

tried to consult with national farmers’ unions, but eventually abandoned its contacts

when it realized that farmers were not willing to move away from the status quo (Vahl

1997: 149). As a consequence, the Commission negotiated directly with the member

states and isolated itself from the critical farmers’ union. In reaction, “farmers’ unions

simply intensified their lobbying activities at the member state level” to block CAP

reform and concession in the GATT negotiations (Van den Hoven 2002: 11). Once

the Commission succeeded in negotiating a compromise with the U.S. at Blair House

in Washington, D.C. in 1992, it was again the French government which threatened to

veto the agreement. Since Germany had shifted its position to support the Blair House

Accord, France ended up in an isolated position and did not carry through its threat

(Balaam 1999: 60).

During the new round of trade talks, opposition to liberalization was also

channelled through national routes. France and Ireland publicly criticized the

Commission’s negotiating position during the Doha ministerial meeting, arguing that

the defence of CAP ought to be the EU’s priority for negotiations (Van den Hoven

2002: 19-20). Until the time of writing, member state disagreement has severely

constrained the Commission’s room for manoeuvre in the current negotiations. It is

thus member state opposition, not agricultural lobbying, that explains development in

agricultural trade negotiations. For the Commission, successful negotiations require

neutralizing member state opposition, not resisting protectionist lobbyists at the

supranational level.

2.1.2. Textiles and clothing

As in agriculture, protectionism in textiles and clothing was achieved through

national strategies. Inversely, when interest groups had to start interacting with the

European Commission, lobbying for protectionism became increasingly difficult.

Protectionism in textiles and clothing dates was enshrined in four successive

Multifibre Arrangements (MFA) from 1974 to 1994 and ended with a Uruguay Round

Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, which stipulated that the MFA will be phased

out over a ten-year period.

For an historical overview, see Aggarwal Vinod K. Aggarwal (1985), Liberal

Protectionism: The International Politics of Organized Textile Trade. Berkeley:

Throughout the MFA period, the orientation of the respective arrangements

resulted from intense intergovernmental bargaining. The relatively moderate EC

policy on MFA I (1974-6) was influenced by the liberal German and Dutch approach,

which resisted U.S. calls for strict protectionism. Since the European industry had not

yet lost its comparative advantage, the Commission did not want to intervene. Once

the textiles and clothing trade balance deteriorated, the Committee for the Textile

Industries in the European Community (COMITEXTIL) lobbied heavily in Brussels

to draw attention to the dramatic fall in employment in the sector. Unimpressed and

doubting the reliability of the figures, the Commission maintained that it would be

wrong to give in to these protectionist demands. But things were different in the

Council. Member states felt concerned about the health of their textiles and clothing

industries and announced that the Community policy should be centred on voluntary

export restraints (Ugur 1998: 660). In the difficult economic times of the late 1970s,

the UK had joined France and Ireland’s strict protectionist demands, supported also in

Italy. Moderate countries seeking a simple renewal of the MFA were eventually

outnumbered (Aggarwal 1985: 146). Faced with insistent member states determined

to protect what they considered to be their national interests, the Commission had to

switch to a protectionist trade policy during MFA II and MFA III (1977-85).

The shift toward gradual liberalization under MFA IV (1986-1994) was tied to

the desire of developed countries to open up trade in services and other new issues

University of California Press. and Hoekman and Kostecki Bernard M. Hoekman and

Michel M. Kostecki (2001), The Political Economy of the World Trading System.

Oxford: Oxford University Press..

(Woolcock 2000: 378). Yet protectionist lobbying at the European level had not

ceased in 1985. COMITEXTIL worked hard to draw attention to the difficult situation

in the sector. In spite of this tactic’s previous success, the industry’s difficulties were

seized on by opponents of textile protection to show that earlier measures had not left

the industry better off. As European countries turned away from Keynesian demand

management, member state support faded. Despite intense lobbying from

COMITEXTIL, trade unions and other textile associations, national representatives on

the Article 133 Committee and COREPER were able to work out a compromise in

favour of gradual liberalization. In 1989, moreover, the Commission accepted the

midterm review of the Uruguay Round, against the insistence of the textile industry

association (Ugur 1998: 663). The Commission later issued a communication

stressing that restructuring was appropriate for the industry and Sir Leon Brittan

announced to a shocked industry audience that “the textile industry is a normal

industry,” (cited in Scheffer 2003). Without the backing of the member states,

protectionist lobbying in textiles and clothing at the EU level was a failure.

In a last attempt to secure special treatment in EU trade policy, industry

representatives formed a new coalition in the early 1990s, the European Textile and

Clothing Coalition, to avert the dangers of the new policy orientation. Simultaneously,

the European Trade Union Committee for Textiles began to organize meetings and

demonstrations. All of these efforts were largely ignored by the Commission, which

insisted that the industry’s problems had to be resolved by securing market openings

in third countries (Ugur 1998: 664-5). At the conclusion of the Uruguay Round, the

EU had endorsed the WTO’s Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, which was to

phase out all protection by January 2005.

Faced with this new reality, the textile industry had to reorganize.

COMITEXTIL, while other textile associations founded a new European association

in 1995: the European Apparel and Textile Organization (EURATEX). Needing to

work with the Commission in order to influence or delay the integration of sensitive

categories into the WTO agreement, EURATEX launched a review of its strategy

(Scheffer 2003). In contrast to the unsuccessful pressure lobbying that had

characterized earlier protectionist demands, European industry representatives

decided to engage in a more cooperative manner with the European Institutions.

As Jacomet (2000: 307) underlines, the new “interactive lobbying” during the

WTO negotiations in the early 1990s had differed sharply from previous activities

because lobbyists had to accept a “trade-off” in the policy demands they could voice:

they exchanged the elimination of the MFA for market access in third countries. Only

by embracing a policy stance centred on market access did textile lobbyists maintain

their contacts with the European Institutions. Indeed, the selection logic of the EU

Institutions forcing European industry representatives to reframe their demands helps

to explain why the EU textile industry became supportive of foreign market access

while its American counterpart continued to press for strict protection. The need to

supply a specific kind of lobbying at the supranational level also becomes clear in the

reorganization of EURATEX. As a result of its internal review, EURATEX decided

to develop a more comprehensive policy “in order to be seen as relevant partners for

policy-makers,” (Scheffer 2003: 108). Faced with very heterogeneous demands from

its national associations, EURATEX now aims not to counteract national lobbying,

but to promote synergies between domestic and European efforts. After the lobbying

failures of the past, EURATEX’s approach today is to focus on pan-European stances

to maintain its leadership role at the EU level.

At the end of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing’s transition period in

2005, European companies complained vigorously about Chinese competition. Still,

they acknowledged that the abandonment of the quota system was beyond their

control. Whether they liked it or not, “the affected companies had to accept the new

logic in order to be able to influence the calendar, the modalities of the new measures

or the transition aid,” (Jacomet 2004: 5). In the absence of member state pressure for

protection, successful business–government relations at the supranational level

required going along with the liberalization objective of the European Commission.

2.2. Developing pan-European policy solutions: trade in services

The multilateral General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) that entered

into force with the founding of the WTO in 1995 is often cited as a prime example of

business influence over trade policy. According to many observers, the American

financial service companies and its Coalition for Service Industries played a key role

in bringing the issue onto the international negotiating table (Drake and Nicolaïdis

1992; Sell 2000; Woll 2004). On the European side, firms were much less in evidence

during the service negotiations in the Uruguay Round and the sectoral negotiations

that followed GATS. However, the European Commission did consult extensively

with industry representatives in two sectors: financial services and telecommunication

services (Van den Hoven 2002: 10).

2.2.1. Financial services

At the conclusion of the Uruguay Round, countries agreed to continue sectoral

negotiations on financial services to obtain more detailed liberalization commitments.

By the initial deadline in 1995, the U.S. declared itself unsatisfied with the existing

offers and walked out of the negotiations. Behind the position of the U.S. government

was the frustration of the U.S. private sector, which had helped to put services on the

WTO agenda and now felt that it was not achieving sufficient market access in

foreign countries (Woolcock 1998).

Faced with the U.S. refusal, the EU assumed the leadership in the financial

service talks and encouraged WTO members to negotiate an interim agreement

without the U.S. in 1995 and to extend the talks until December 1997. Over the next

two years, the European Commission went out of its way to gain the support of

European financial service firms so it could counter the influence of the U.S. private

sector. Indeed, representatives of “Citicorp, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and the

insurance companies – particularly the American Insurance Group and Aetna –

established command posts” near the WTO headquarters and conferred with

American negotiators throughout the financial service talks (Andrews 1997).

Business lobbying comparable to the activities of the U.S. Coalition of Service

Industries was only common in the United Kingdom, where financial service firms

had founded British Invisibles in 1986, an association to promote the interests of its

members, which later turned into International Financial Services London. Part of

British Invisibles was the working committee LOTIS (the acronym for Liberalisation

Of Trade In Services), which dates back to the early 1980s (see Wesselius 2001). For

the European Commission, working with these private sector associations was crucial,

because they felt that European firms could best engage the U.S. private sector in a

continued dialogue. Transnational business negotiations began at the World Economic

Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 1996. U.S., UK and European financial service

representatives met in the office of British Invisibles and eventually formed the

Financial Leaders Group to promote the interests of the affected firms on both sides of

the Atlantic (Sell 2000: 178).

The European Trade Commissioner, Sir Leon Brittan, welcomed the creation

of this group and worked closely with its European chair, Andrew Buxton of Barclays

Bank (Wesselius 2002: 7). For the EU negotiators, the Financial Leaders Group was

an important channel through which they hoped to moderate U.S. expectations, in

particular by addressing the concerns of the U.S. private sectors, which had previously

brought the talks to a standstill (Woolcock 1998: 33). Sir Leon Brittan had long been

frustrated with the lack of support among European companies and tried to encourage

them to mobilize around the issue of international trade liberalization. A

representative of the European service sector remembers: “At one occasion, he finally

invited a series of CEOs for dinner and said something to the effect of ‘either you will

get organized, or I will take the decisions single-handedly’.”

In contrast to the aggressive lobbying of U.S. financial service firms, European

firms entered negotiations not so much on their own initiative but, most importantly,

in response to the active encouragement of the European Commission, which was

looking for business support for the difficult financial service talks in the 1990s. The

close business–government relationship that developed in the EU after 1996 was

Interview with the author in Brussels, November 13, 2002.

based on the shared aim of liberalizing the sector. After an unexpected change in the

position of the Asian countries during the currency crisis in 1997, negotiators finally

reached an agreement on December 12, 1997. Yet the cooperation between financial

service firm leaders and the European Commission went even further than the

Financial Service Agreement. In 1998, Sir Leon Brittan asked Andrew Buxton once

again to create a select group of, this time, purely European business leaders. The

European Service Forum, launched on January 26, 1999, today ensures the

Commission’s continued support for the liberalization of service industries and

consequentially benefits from privileged access to trade policy-making at the

supranational level. Had European firms not supported liberalization, it is highly

unlikely that they would have been able to work so closely with EU policy-makers.

2.2.2. Telecommunications

In telecommunications, the position of firms was more difficult. European

network operators had long benefited from privileged positions as monopoly

providers in their home countries. The WTO’s sectoral negotiations on basic

telecommunications liberalization from 1994-1997 coincided with the liberalization of

the internal EU market. While firms wanted to benefit from foreign market access

once telecommunication markets were liberalized, they were also concerned about

protecting their home market positions. Solicited by the European Commission,

European operators therefore adopted a pro-liberalization stance in the mid-1990s,

which allowed them to follow and influence the content of the multilateral negotiation

in the WTO while still maintaining close ties to their home governments in order to

defend national interests on specific issues.

In fact, the project of European telecommunications liberalization had met

with very different echoes in European member states. The United Kingdom and the

Nordic countries had introduced competition in their home markets and pushed

actively for Europe-wide liberalization. Germany, France and the Benelux countries

had initiated more moderate reforms, but had their reservations about complete

liberalization. However, the Southern countries – Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal –

were not interested in changing their telecommunication systems (see Noam 1992).

The struggle between the European Commission and the member states over internal

telecommunications liberalization began in 1987 and is recounted elsewhere in great

detail (e.g. Sandholtz 1998; Thatcher 1999b; Eliassen and Sjøvaag 1999; Holmes and

Young 2002). After some judicial wrangling over EU competences, the Commission

was able to propose the liberalization of telephone services in 1993 and infrastructures

in 1994. In 1996, member states reached agreement on implementing liberalization by

January 1, 1998. What is important for an understanding of the WTO involvement of

European network operators is the consultation efforts made by the European

Commission during the internal liberalization project.

Trying to gain support in the face of member state resistance, Martin

Bangemann, European Commissioner for Industry, Information Technology and

Telecommunications, called together a group of “wise men”, leaders from the telecom

industry and user companies, in order to prepare a communication on the international

competitiveness of European telecommunications. The consultation procedure is

noteworthy, because the Commission dealt with the senior officials of the national

operators directly and encouraged them to evaluate their position in the

internationalizing market. Under pressure from user companies and competition from

liberalized countries attracting telecommunications-based firms, operators in France

and Germany began to concentrate on reform and internationalization, and therefore

supported the EU liberalization (Thatcher 1999a). With the backing of the leading

European telecommunications providers, the report issued by the senior official

group, the so-called Bangemann report, was important for encouraging member states

onto the route of liberalization (High-Level Group on the Information Society 1994).

Lobbying on multilateral liberalization was closely connected to internal

liberalization. Before 1996, European network operators were not involved in the

sectoral negotiations that had begun in 1994 (Woll 2004). With the announcement of

the 1998 deadline, the European Telecommunication Network Operators association

(ETNO), founded in 1992, was able to gather support for multilateral liberalization as

well. A member of the WTO working group recalls: “We had good relations with the

European Commission. There was no opposition: the Commission works for Europe

and we work for Europe as well.”

ETNO fully supported the multilateral negotiations

and helped the Commission negotiate the Basic Telecom Agreement in 1997.

Indeed, most operators affirm having been in support of the 1997 agreement

and having engaged actively through their European association throughout the talks.

Despite these declarations, many operators had concerns about losing their national

privileges and so used their national ties to maintain a degree of control over access to

their home markets. Telefónica, the Spanish operator, for example, insisted on

restricting non-EC investment to the Spanish market, despite the fact that it had

become an important overseas investor in Latin America. When the U.S. criticized the

Interview with the author in Brussels, September 3, 2003.

Spanish position, negotiations over the case turned into bilateral talks between the

Commission and the Spanish government, which had taken up the highly politicized

issue (Niemann 2004: 399). Similarly, network operators in other countries tried to

guarantee national privileges through the implementation of the EC regulatory

framework. Member states and their regulatory agencies enjoyed immense freedom to

determine interconnection terms and tariffs between networks or to impose universal

service conditions. In contrast to British Telecom, which received no extra funding for

universal service, France Télécom had the right to obtain compensation (Thatcher

1999a). At the same time that ETNO was lobbying for reciprocal liberalization of

basic telecommunication services through the WTO, national operators were seeking

to maintain regulatory advantages, i.e. restrictions to foreign market access, through

their national governments.

3. Conclusion

The comparison between agriculture, textiles and clothing, financial services

and telecommunication services shows that trade policy lobbying in the EU is marked

by a two-channel logic. Protectionism (agriculture) is best defended through the

national route, while lobbying in support of liberalization (financial services) happens

at the supranational level, in particular through contacts with the European

Commission. Companies that seek both foreign market access and restrictions to

competition in their home markets therefore tend to adopt an ambiguous position:

they choose to support liberalization “in general” in order to stay in contact with the

European Commission, but also work through their member states to maintain

national restrictions (telecommunications). Without the backing of their home

governments, protectionist lobbying that impedes European market integration is

unsuccessful at the supranational level (textiles and clothing). In trade policy, firms

thus face a trade-off. If they want to maintain good relations with the European

Commission, they have to frame their demands in terms of pan-European solutions,

which often means moving away from their immediate interest.

The entrepreneurial role of the European Commission in creating public–

private contacts on trade policy has several implications. First of all, not just

businesses but also other interest groups, such as environmental or social NGOs, can

be solicited for input into the European trade policy process. As current consultation

demonstrates, the Commission has indeed made an effort to include an ever broader

range of actors in order to increase its legitimacy and work towards a policy

consensus (Woolcock 2000). The increasing importance of NGO consultation on trade

issues means that firms are now obliged to work on their public image. One business

representative of a petroleum company even estimated that 80% of his public affairs

responsibilities concern contacts with NGOs, not governments.

However, firms

remain the principal source of expertise on trade barriers and will therefore come into

their own whenever the EU seeks to increase its leverage vis-à-vis trading partners

such as the U.S.. While NGOs may affect the atmosphere of trade negotiations, it is

important not to overestimate the direct influence of public interest groups, even

though the Commission tries to take their opinion into account through the Civil

Society Dialogue (De Bièvre and Dür 2007).

Cited by Dominique Jacoment, board member of EURATEX, at a book conference on “Interest

groups and the State in France,” CEVIPOF – Sciences Po, Paris, on January 11, 2007.

Second, the complexity of the strategic interactions in European trade policy

caution against superficial analyses of trade policy demands in the EU. Because of the

two-channel logic, we should expect to find many firms declaring themselves in

favour of trade liberalization, simply because this ensures them greater access to the

EU trade negotiators. A study of trade preferences thus needs to distinguish between

the strategic positions of firms and their underlying preferences, which might be much

more ambiguous than the official declarations would lead us to believe.

Finally, the comparison between the various business–government relations

shows that European trade policy lobbying is complex. To assume that trade policy

simply reflects producer demands, as many have suggested in the case of the U.S.,

would be to miss important aspects of public–private relations in the EU. While firms

might capture their government’s positions or even the supranational agenda in certain

cases, the Commission also instrumentalizes European firms and even affects the

content of their lobbying demands. This runs counter to the common assumption that

industry demands and governments simply execute trade policy. Such a demand-side

conception of policy-making runs through classic trade theory, international political

economy and the economic analysis of business-government interactions. This article

has tried to demonstrate that it is inappropriate for an understanding of European trade

policy. The EU’s common commercial policy results as much from producer

demands as it does from the complex decision-making procedures, the institutional

self-interest of public actors and the power struggles created by their interaction.

Considering the EU institutions as the passive supplier of trade regulation obscures

some of the most crucial mechanisms of this policy process.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Manfred Elsig, Holger Döring and Armin Schäfer and the

editors for their helpful remarks.

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