The Role of EU Negotiators in Third Party Trade Negotiations: One Agent and Two Sets of Principals

Larsen, Magdalena. (2007) The Role of EU Negotiators in Third Party Trade Negotiations: One Agent and Two Sets of Principals. In: UNSPECIFIED, Montreal, Canada. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This paper explores the utility of using principal-agent analysis – both at the level of the Commission and the European Union as a whole – to explain the EU agenda-setting process in the negotiations between the EU and South Africa that led to the Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement of 1999. The paper argues that the internal Commission negotiations, which are often overlooked in analyses of EU trade negotiations, need to be analysed. It demonstrates that both the initial EU agenda and the final agreement with South Africa were influenced by the intra-Commission negotiations, and that the EU negotiators, who had strong developmental interests due to their location within DG Development, were particularly influential.

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