Over the past years, the economic crisis has significantly challenged the ways through which social movements have conceptualised and interacted with European Union institutions and policies. ...Although valuable research on the Europeanisation of movements has already been conducted, finding moderate numbers of Europeanised protests and actors, more recent studies on the subject have been limited to austerity measures and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has been investigated more from a trade unions’ or an international relations perspective. In this article, the TTIP is used as a very promising case study to analyse social movements’ Europeanisation – that is, their capacity to mobilise referring to European issues, targets and identities. Furthermore, the TTIP is a crucial test case because it concerns a policy area (foreign trade) which falls under the exclusive competence of the EU. In addition, political opportunities for civil society actors are ‘closed’ in that negotiations are kept ‘secret’ and discussed mainly within the European Council, and it is difficult to mobilise a large public on such a technical issue. So why and how has this movement become ‘Europeanised’? This comparative study tests the Europeanisation hypothesis with a protest event analysis on anti‐TTIP mobilisation in six European countries (Italy, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Austria) at the EU level in the period 2014–2016 (for a total of 784 events) and uses semi‐structured interviews in Brussels with key representatives of the movement and policy makers. The findings show that there is strong adaptation of social movements to multilevel governance – with the growing presence of not only purely European actors, but also European targets, mobilisations and transnational movement networks – with a ‘differential Europeanisation’. Not only do the paths of Europeanisation vary from country to country (and type of actor), but they are also influenced by the interplay between the political opportunities at the EU and domestic levels.
Negotiations between the world's two largest trading partners, the European Union (EU) and the USA, on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have been ongoing since July 2013. ...Anticipating the controversy the agreement has sparked, EU trade policy-makers in the European Commission have put considerable effort into discursively framing the agreement on their terms. Drawing on computable general equilibrium (CGE) models of the agreement's likely impact, the central claim has been that the TTIP promises to deliver much-needed 'growth and jobs' without stretching the public purse at a time of austerity. Our main argument in this article, drawing on the insights of the economic sociologist Jens Beckert, is that these CGE models - and the figures they have produced - represent an important exercise in 'managing of fictional expectations'. The models make overly optimistic predictions about the ability of the EU and the USA to eliminate regulatory barriers to trade - which are unlikely to be realised in the face of considerable political opposition - and also downplay the potential deregulatory impact of an agreement. Rather than act as a reliable guide to future outcomes, we thus show that these models serve the pro-liberalisation agenda of the European Commission and other advocates of the TTIP.
What type of trade agreement is the public willing to accept? Instead of focusing on individual concerns about market access and trade barriers, we argue that specific treaty design and, in ...particular, the characteristics of the dispute settlement mechanism, play a critical role in shaping public support for trade agreements. To examine this theoretical expectation, we conduct a conjoint experiment that varies diverse treaty-design elements and estimate preferences over multiple dimensions of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) based on a nationally representative sample in Germany. We find that compared to other alternatives, private arbitration, known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), generates strong opposition to the trade agreement. As the single most important factor, this effect of dispute settlement characteristic is strikingly large and consistent across individuals’ key attributes, including skill levels, information, and national sentiment, among others.
Sprays of precursor solutions are used in flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) to produce functional nanoparticles with specific properties. The present study concerns the precursor titanium(IV) isopropoxide ...(TTIP) in p-xylene. A dilute monodisperse spray carried by an air stream is directed against an air stream to establish a counterflowing laminar spray flame. The complex thermophysical properties of the bi-component droplets are incorporated into the code as well as the detailed chemical reactions of the system with 213 chemical reactions among 52 species; the chemical reaction mechanism includes thermal decomposition of the TTIP and the combustion of p-xylene. The droplets are modeled using the multicomponent evaporation model. Drag and gravity forces are considered in the equation of droplet motion. Monodisperse spray flame structures are presented depending on the gas strain rate, the initial droplet size, the precursor mass loading as well as the equivalence ratio. The preferential evaporation of the more volatile p-xylene provides the gaseous fuel for combustion, and the thermal decomposition of the precursor TTIP considerably reduces the flame temperature.
•A detailed study of precursor solution sprays for use in FSP is presented.•A bi-component droplet model with detailed properties is used.•Parameter study: droplet radius, equivalence ratio, precursor loading, strain rate.•A detailed reaction scheme for p-xylene and thermal decomposition mechanism of TTIP.•The interaction between the spray evaporation and chemical reactions is analyzed.
This paper analyses Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations in order to assess how the move towards tighter economic integration within the EU‒US strategic partnership ...impacts on legislative‒executive relations in EU trade policy. The analysis examines the institutional, substantive and party political dimensions of national parliaments' scrutiny of the Common Commercial Policy. Based on insights into both domestic and EU channels of parliamentary monitoring of TTIP negotiations, the paper argues that, although the government remains the central object of democratic control, the involvement of national parliaments in transatlantic trade extends to encompass the EU's own transatlantic and trade policies. This is rooted in the legislatures' legal capacity to constrain the executive in the negotiation, conclusion and, where applicable, ratification phases of EU trade agreements. It is argued that national parliamentary influence takes the shape of politicisation of the legitimacy of the expected policy outcomes of these agreements.
Context-driven attitude formation Jungherr, Andreas; Mader, Matthias; Schoen, Harald ...
Review of international political economy : RIPE,
04/2018, Letnik:
25, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Many studies use the same factors to explain attitudes toward specific trade agreements and attitudes toward the principle of free trade and thus treat both objects as interchangeable. Contemporary ...trade agreements, however, often reach beyond trade in the narrow sense. Consequently, factors unrelated to free trade may affect citizens' evaluations of these agreements. We propose a model of attitude formation toward specific trade agreements that includes the societal context as a constitutive feature. We expect salient aspects of an agreement to activate corresponding predispositions. Empirically, we compare how this contextual model and a standard model perform in explaining German citizens' attitudes toward free trade and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The results show that the standard model performs well in explaining public opinion on the principle of free trade but is less useful in explaining attitudes toward TTIP. The latter were driven by postures toward transatlantic cooperation, predispositions toward the role of interest groups in politics, and market regulation – aspects salient in German public discourse about TTIP. In sum, we find ample evidence for the need to differentiate between the two attitude objects and for our contextual model of attitude formation.
On every enlargement, European Union applies to all its new Member States a set of common legal norms, known under the name of acquis communautaire, norms that also include multilateral or bilateral ...international agreements the EU is part of. Currently, the EU and the US are negotiating a regional trade agreement, namely the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), of which effects over the Member States will be established according to their particular national legal order, as part of the EU acquis, presented under the form of secondary EU legislation. As part of the 28 EU Member States, Romania’s legal system will apply the European international norms that regard the dispute resolutions that might occur among states or states and investors, in accordance with the European’s Court of Justice (ECJ) jurisprudence, as it will be provided by the legal text of TTIP, after it will be adopted, ratified and implemented by the EU, and subsequently, by each of the European Union’s Member States.
EU trade policy is in flux. This reflects various developments, chief among them: the deepening of the global trade liberalisation agenda, the EU's own constitutional recasting of the Common ...Commercial Policy, and the politicization of trade. The purpose of this special issue is to analyse the changing politics of trade in the EU, focusing on the EU FTAs with Korea, the US, Canada, and Japan. We propose to view the negotiations of these agreements through the lens of contentious market regulation. This approach takes the regulatory turn in trade seriously, and sheds light on its ramifications for the mobilisation of new actors and the involvement of parliaments in the politics of trade. After tracing the development of the new EU FTAs and discussing the specificity of the EU's approach to deepened liberalisation, the article presents the framework of contentious market regulation and the individual contributions to the special issue.
In developing an extensive network of trade agreements, the European Union has pushed for liberalization commitments that impinge on the competencies of subnational jurisdictions. This raises new ...challenges in federal systems as the emerging multilevel character of trade politics means subnational authorities could increasingly demand a say in the negotiation or ratification of these trade agreements. To address the tension between subnational regulatory autonomy and collective problem-solving in trade negotiations, Europe needs to avoid suboptimal trade outcomes where actions of contestation by subnational jurisdictions on the grounds of regulatory encroachment can undermine or veto collective agreement. Using the cases of Belgium and Germany, this article illustrates how the growing subnational contestation around trade agreements requires greater coordination and consensus to avoid domestic gridlock in their ratification. The article suggests normative ideas for the EU to address the overlapping authority challenges across multilevel governance. As the values of trade have changed, these normative measures should include the framing of trade narratives, addressing asymmetries of influence, enhancing subnational engagement, and mitigating the distributive costs of liberalization. These avenues for trade policymaking are to be ultimately advantageous for the EU's pursuit of greater integration.
Sustainability is increasingly a priority in the policies of the European Union, especially in the Common Agricultural Policy. This paper focuses on Sustainable Development Goals, the European Green ...Deal, and the Farm to Fork Strategy in an attempt to establish a relationship with the European Union’s trade policy. Three selected components of the agri-food sector—the food supply chain, agri-food quality standards, and global trade—are examined in relation to defined sustainability aspects. The aim is to understand the interrelationship between the three components with specific regard to sustainability, to highlight their high complexity and current relevance, to contribute to systematic analysis in this area, and to present current progress. This qualitative–explorative study is empirically supported by a survey of market experts, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the European Union and the United States is used as an example. The results show the complexity between the relationships of the three components with a focus on sustainability and reveal a deep uncertainty. The most notable results are the limited level of knowledge and the insufficient attention from business representatives to sustainability aspects. Finally, the study identifies the state of integrating a sustainable perspective into European Union trade policy and provides suggestions for further research.
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