"Who cares about modalities? The European Commission and the EU member states as interdependent actors in the WTO negotiating process"

Kerremans, Bart. (2003) "Who cares about modalities? The European Commission and the EU member states as interdependent actors in the WTO negotiating process". In: UNSPECIFIED, Nashville, TN. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The analysis itself is based on two parts of empirical research. The first-and most extensive-part consists of interviews taken from both Commission officials and officials of the member states responsible for the negotiations on the Uruguay Round. The aim of these interviews was not to conduct research on the substantive issues of these three cases, but rather to help the interviewees to focus their answers to concrete cases, rather than to the abstract notion of negotiations in general. This was necessary because the questions themselves dealt with the way in which the respondents perceived their role and the opportunities of their role in both the internal EU decision-making and the external negotiations, and the limits of that role and its opportunities, given the involvement of the other actors (external partners, member state representatives, Commission representatives), and the impact of certain factors (the institutional context of the external negotiations, stages in the negotiating process, politicization of negotiating issues, the constraints of the mandate, etc. The second part of the empirical research was conducted through interviews taken from European Commission negotiators, officials from the Belgian trade administration in the course of February and April 2001, and British trade officials in the course of May and July 2002. Due to time constraints, it only concerns seven Commision officials, three Belgian officials, and seven British officials directly involved in the operation of the Committee 133. The interviews focused on the preparations of the (abortive) attempts to start the Millennium Round (1998-99) and on the subsequent Commission attempts to reanimate the idea of a round of multilateral trade negotiations in 2001 (Everything but Arms Initiative).

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